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Cornell  University  Library 
E  302.J45  1869 
V.7 
Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson 


3   1924  026  091    615 


K7 


® 

THE 


WEITING8 


or 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON: 

BEING  HIS 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY,  CORRESPONDENCE,  REPORTS,  MESSAGES, 

ADDRESSES,  AND  OTHER  WRITINGS,  OFFICIAL 

AND  PRIVATE. 

PUBLISHED  BT  THE  ORDER  OP  THE  JOINT  COMMITTEE  OF  COHCRESS  ON  THE  LIBKARV. 

FROM  THE  ORIGINAL  MANUSCRIPTS, 

DEPOSITED    m  THE   DEPARTMENT   OP   STATE. 

t 

■WITH   BXPLANATOKT   NOTES,    TABLES  OF   CONTEITTS     AND   A   COPIOUS    INDEX 
TO  EACH  TOLITME,  AS  WELL  AS  A  QENEBAL  INDEX  TO  THE  WHOLE. 

BY    THE    EDITOR 

H.    A.  WASHIITGTOK 


VOL.  VIL 


PHILADELPHIA: 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT   &   CO. 

186  9. 


^.//ro 


/^cornell\ 

university 

LIBRARY 


CONTENTS    TO   VOL.   VII. 


BOOK  n. 

Paet  111. — Continued. — Letters  written  after  his  return  to  the  Uni- 
ted States  down  to  the  time  of  his  death. — (1790-1826,) — 3. 

Adams,  John,  letters  written  to,  25,  37,43,  54,  61,  81,  199,  217,  243,  254, 

264,  274,  280,  307,  313,  33.7,  435. 
Adams,  Mrs.  A.,  letter  written  to,  62. 
Adams,  J.  Q.,  letter  written  to,  436. 

BaiTy,  Wm.  T.,  letter  written  to,  255. 
Blatchly,  C.  C,  letter  written  to,  263. 
Breokenridge,  General,  letters  written  to,  204,  237. 

Cabell,  Joseph  C,  letters  written  to,  201,  329,  350,  392. 
Campbell,  John,  letter  written  to,  268. 
Cartv^right,  Major  John,  letter  written  to,  355. 
Cooper,  Dr.,  letter  written  to,  2Q6. 
Corey,  M.,  letter  written  to,  318. 
Crawford,  Wm.  H.,  letter  written  to,  5. 

Dearborne,  General,  letter  written  to,  214. 
Delaplaine,  Mr.,  letter  written  to,  20 
Denison,  Hon.  J.  Evelyn,  letter  written  to,  415. 

Earle,  Thomas,  letter  written  to,  310. 
Emmet,  Dr.,  letters  written  to,  438,  441. 
Engelbretcht,  Isaac,  letter  written  to,  337. 
Eppes,  Francis,  letter  written  to,  197. 
,  Everett,  Edward,  letters  written  to,  232,  270,  340,  380,  437. 

Flower,  George,  letter  written  to,  83. 


iv  OONTENTB  TO  VOL.  VIL 

Gallatin,  Albert,  letter  written  to,  '7'J. 
Garnett,  Robert  J.,  letter  written  to,  326. 
Giles,  Wm.  B.,  letters  written  to,  424,  426. 
Gilmer,  Francis  W.,  letter  written  to,  3. 
Gooch,  Claiborne  W.,  letter  written  to,  430. 

Hammond,  Mr.  C,  letter  written  to,  215. 
Harding,  David  H.,  letter  written  to,  346. 
Hopkins,  George  R,  letter  written  to,  259. 
Humboldt,  Baron,  letter  written  to,  74. 
Humphreys,  Dr.  Thomas,  letter  written  to,  67 

Johnson,  Judge,  letters  written  to,  276,  290. 

Kerchival,  Samuel,  letters  written  to,  9,  35. 

La  Fayette,  Marquis  de  la,  letters  written  to,  63,  324,  378 

Lee,  H.,  letters  written  to,  376,  407; 

Lee,  Wm.,  letter  written  to,  56. 

Livingston,  Edward,  letters  written  to,  342,  402. 

Logan,  Dr.,  letter  written  to,  19. 

Ludlow,  Wm.,  letter  written  to,  377. 

Macon,  Nathaniel,  letter  written  to,  222. 

Madison,  James,  letters  written  to,  304,  373,  422,  432. 

Mannus,  Dr.  John,  letter  written  to,  72. 

Mansfield,  Jared,  lettei-  written  to,  203. 

Marbois,  M.  de,  letter  written  to,  76. 

Mease,  Dr.  James,  letter  written  to,  410. 

Megan,  Mr.,  letter  written  to,  286. 

Mellish,  Mr.,  letter  written  to,  51. 

Morse,  Jedediah,  letter  written  to,  233. 

Nicholas,  Mr.,  letter  written  to,  229. 

Pickering,  Timothy,  letter  written  to,  210. 
Pleasants,  John  Hampden,  letter  written  to,  344. 
Plumer,  Governor,  letter  written  to,  18. 
President,  The,  letters  written  to,  287,  299,  315. 

Ritchie  &  Gooch,  letters  written  to,  239,  246. 
Roane,  Judge,  letters  written  tOj  211,  212. 


CONTENTS  TO  VOL.  VIL  y 

Rodgers,  Patrick  K.,  letter  written  to,  327. 

Roscoe,  Mr.,  letter  written  to,  195. 

Rush  Richard,  letters  written  to,  347  379. 

Secretary  of  State,  letter  wiitten  to,  41. 

Short,  Wm.,  letters  written  to,  309,  389. 

Sinclair,  St.  John,  letter  written  to,  22. 

Skidman,  Thomas,  letter  written  to,  258. 

Smith,  Mr.  M.  Harrison,  letter  written  to,  27. 

Smith,  James,  letter  written  to,  269. 

Smith,  General  Samuel,  letters  written  to,  284. 

Smith,  T.  J.,  letter  written  to,  401. 

Smyth,  General  Alexander,  letter  written  to,  394. 

Sparks,  Jared,  letter  written  to,  332. 

Stuart,  Josephus  B.,  letter  written  to,  64. 

Summers,  George  W.,  cfec,  letter  written  to,  230. 

Taylor,  John,  letter  written  to,  17. 
Taylor,  Hugh  P.,  letter  written  to,  2. 
Terrel,  Dabney,  letter  written  to,  206. 
Terril,  Chiles,  letter  written  to,  260. 
Thweat,  Archibald,  letters  written  to,  198. 
Tiffany,  Isaac  H.,  letter  written  to,  31. 
Ticknor,  George,  letter  written  to,  300. 

Van  Buren,  Martin,  letter  written  to,  362, 
Vaughan,  John,  letter  written  to,  409. 

Waterhouse,  Dr.  Benjamin,  letters  written  to,  252,  257. 

Weightman,  Mr.,  letter  written  to,  450. 

Whittemore,  Mr.  Robert,  letter  written  to,  245. 

Wiss,  Lewis  M.,  letter  written  to,  419. 

Woodward,  Mr.,  letter  written  to,  338. 

Woodward,  Judge  Augustus  B.,  letter  written  to,  405. 

Wright,  Miss,  letter  written  to,  408. 

Address  lost,  letters  written  to,  220,  223,  383,  397,  411,  426,  431,  444. 

Letters  to  Thomas  Jefferson  from  John  Adams,  29,  38,  47,  58,  68,  70,  85, 
219,  261,  279,  302,  396. 


BOOK  III.— Part  I. 

REPORTS  AND  OPINIONS  WHILE  SECRETARY  OF  STATE. 

1.  Report  on  the  method  of  obtaining  fresh  water  from  salt,  455. 

2.  Opinion  on  the  proposition  for  establishing  a  woollen  manufactory  in 

Virginia,  460. 

3.  Report  on  copper  coinage,  462. 

4.  Opinion  on  the  question  whether  the  Senate  has  the  right  to  negative 

the  grade  of  persons  appointed  by  the  Executive  to  fill  foreign  mis- 
sions, 465. 

5.  Opinion  on  the  validity  of  a  grant  made  by  the  State  of  Georgia  to 

certain  companies  of  individuals,  of  a  tract  of  country,  whereof  the 
Indian  right  had  never  been  extinguished,  with  power  to  such  indi- 
viduals to  extinguish  the  Indian  right,  467. 

6.  Opinion  in  favor  of  the  Resolution  of  May  21,  1790,  directing  that,  in 

all  cases  where  payment  had  not  been  already  made,  the  debts  due 
to  the  soldiers  of  Virginia  and  North  Caiolina,  should  be  paid  to  the 
original  claimants,  and  not  to  their  assignees,  469. 

7.  Report  on  plan  for  establishing  uniformity  in  the  coins,  weights  and 

measures,  of  the  United  States,  472. 

8.  Opinion  on  the  question  whether  the  President  should  veto  the  bill, 

declaring  that  the  seat  of  government  shall  be  transferred  to  the  Po- 
tomac in  the  year  1790,  498. 

9.  Opinion  respecting  expenses  and  salaries  of  foreign  ministers,  501. 
10.  Opinion  in  regard  to  the  continuances  of  the  monopoly  of  the  com- 
merce of  the  Creek  nation  enjoyed  by  Colonel  McGillivray,  504. 

.  11.  Opinion  respecting  our  foreign  debt,  506. 

12.  Opinion  on  the  question  whether  Lord  Dorchester  should  be  permitted 

to  march  troops  through  the  territories  of  United  States  from  Detroit 
to  the  Mississippi,  508. 

13.  Opinion  on'  the  question  whether  the  real  object  of  the  expedition  of 
I    Governor  St.  Clair,  should  be  notified  to  Lord  Dorchester,  510. 

14.  Opinion  on  the  proceedings  to  be  had  under  the  Residence  Act,  511. 


CONTENTS  TO  VOL.    VII. 


vu 


15.  Keport  of  the  Secretary  of  State  to  the  President  of  the  United  States 

on  the  Eeport  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Government  of  the  North-West 
of  the  Ohio,  516. 

16.  Opinion  on  certain  proceedings  of  the  Executive  in  the  North-Western 

Territory,  515. 

17.  Eeport  on  certain  letters  hetween  the  President  and  Governeur  Morris, 

relative  to  our  difficulties  v?ith  England,  517. 

18.  Eeport  on  the  Mediterranean  trade,  519. 

19.  Eeport  on  the  Algerine  prisoners,  532. 

20.  Eeport  on  the  cod  and  whale  fisheries,  538. 

21.  Opinion  against  the  constitutionaHty  of  a  National  Bank,  555. 

22.  Opinion  relative  to  the  ten  mile  square  for  the  federal  government,  561. 

23.  Eeport  on  the  policy  of  securing  peculiar  marks  to  manufacturers  by 

law,  563. 

24.  Opinion  relative  to  the  demolition  of  Mr.  Carroll's  house  by  Major 

L'Enfant,  in  laying  out  the  Federal  City  564. 

25.  Opinion  relative  to  certain  lands  on  Lake  Erie,  sold  by  the  U.  States 

to  Pennsylvania,  567. 

26.  Eeport  on  the  negotiations  with  Spain  to  secure  the  navigation  of  the 

Mississippi,  and  a  port  on  the  same,  568. 

27.  Eeport  on  the  case  of  Charles  Eussell  and  others,  claiming  certain 

lands,  592. 

28.  Eeport  relative  to  negotiations  at  Madrid,  593. 

29.  Opinion  on  bill  apportioning  representation,  594. 

30.  Opinion  relative  to  the  re-capture  of  slaves,  escaped  to  Florida,  601. 

31.  Eeport  on  the  assays  at  the  mint,  604. 

32.  Eeport  on  the  petition  of  John  Eodgers  relative  to  certain  lands  on  the 

north-east  side  of  the  Tennessee,  605. 

33.  Eeport  relative  to  the  boundaries  of  the  lands  between  the  Ohio  and 

the  lakes  acquired  by  treaties  from  the  Indians,  608. 

34.  Eeport  on  proceedings  of  Secretary  of  State  to  transfer  to  Europe  the 

annual  fund  of  $40,000,  appropriated  to  that  department,  610. 

35.  Opinion  on  the  question  whether  the  United  States  have  the  right  to 

renounce  their  treaties  with  France,  or  hold  them  suspended,  until 
the  government  of  that  country  shall  become  established,  611. 

36.  Opinion  relative  to  granting  passports  to  American  vessels,  624. 

37.  Opinion  relative  to  the  case  of  a  British  vessel  captured  by  a  French 

vessel,  purchased  by  French  citizens,  and  fitted  out  as  a  privateer  in 
one  of  our  ports,  626. 


viii  CONTENTS   TO  VOL.  VIL 

'  38.  Opinion  on  the  proposition  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  open  a 

new  loan,  629. 
\  39.  Opinion  relative  to  the  policy  of  a  new  loan,  633. 
40.  Report  on  the  restrictions  and  privileges  of  the  commerce  of  the  Uiu- 

ted  states  in  foreign  countries,  636. 
X  41.  Report  on  the  mint,  651, 


PART      III.— CONTINaED. 

LETTERS  WRITTEN  AFTER  HIS  RETURN  TO  THE 
V.  S.  DOWN  TO  THE  TIME  OF  HIS  DEATH. 

1790-1826. 


PART    III.  — Continued. 

LETTEkS  WRITTEN  AFTER  HIS  RETURN  TO  THE 
U.  S.  DOWN  TO  THE  TIME  OF  HIS  DEATH. 

1790-1826 


TO    FRANCIS    W.    GILMER. 

M0NTICELI.0,  J^ne  7,  1816. 

Deak  Sik, — I  received  a  few  days  ago  from  Mr.  Dupont  the 
enclosed  manuscript,  with  permission  to  read  it,  and  a  request, 
when  read,  to  forward  it  to  you,  in  expectation  that  you  would 
translate  it.  It  is  well  worthy  of  publication  for  the  instruction 
of  onr  citizens,  being  profound,  sound,  and  short.  Our  legisla- 
tors are  not  sufficiently  apprized  of  the  rightful  limits  of  their 
power;  that  their  true  office  is  to  declare  and  enforce  only  our 
natural  rights  and  duties,  and  to  take  none  of  them  from  us.  No 
man  has  a  natural  right  to  commit  aggression  on  the  equal  rights 
of  another  ;  and  this  is  all  from  which  the  laws  ought  to  restrain 
him  ;  every  man  is  under  the  natural  duty  of  contributing  to  the 
necessities  of  the  society ;  and  this  is  all  the  laws  should  enforce 
on  him  ;  and,  no  man  having  a  natural  right  to  be  the  judge  be- 
tween himself  and  another,  it  is  his  natural  duty  to  submit  to 
the  umpirage  of  an  impartial  third.  When  the  laws  have  de- 
clared and  enforced  all  this,  they  have  fulfilled  their  functions , 
and  the  idea  is  quite  unfounded,  that  on  entering  into  society  we 
give  up  any  natural  right.  The  trial  of  every  law  by  one  of 
those  texts,  would  lessen  much  the  labors  of  our  legislators,  and 
lighten  equally  our  municipal  codes.     There  is  a  work,  of  the 


4  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

first  order  of  merit  now  in  the  press  at  Washington,  by  Destutt 
Tracy,  on  the  subject  of  political  economy,  which  he  brings  mto 
the  compass  of  three  hundred  pages,  octavo.  In  a  preliminary 
discourse  on  the  origin  of  the  right  of  property,  he  coincides 
much  with  the  principles  of  the  present  manuscript ;  but  is  more 
developed,  more  demonstrative.  He  promises  a  future  work  on 
morals,  in  which  I  lament  to  see  that  he  will  adopt  the  princi- 
ples of  Hobbes,  or  humiliation  to  human  nature  ;  that  the 
sense  of  justice  and  injustice  is  not  derived  from  our  natural  or- 
ganization, but  founded  on  convention  only.  I  lament  this  the 
more,  as  he  is  unquestionably  the  ablest  writer  living,  on  abstract 
subjects.  Assuming  the  fact,  that  the  earth  has  been  created  in 
time,  and  consequently  the  dogma  of  final  causes,  we  yield,  of 
course,  to  this  short  syllogism.  Man  was  created  for  social  inter- 
covirse ;  but  social  intercourse  cannot  be  maintained  without  a 
sense  of  justice  ;  then  man  must  have  been  created  with  a  sense 
of  justice.  There  is  an  error  into  which  most  of  the  specula- 
tors on  government  have  fallen,  and  which  the  well-known  state 
of  society  of  our  Indians  ought,  before  now,  to  have  corrected. 
In  their  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  government,  they  suppose  it 
to  have  commenced  in  the  patriarchal  or  monarchical  form.  Our 
Indians  are  evidently  in  that  state  of  nature  which  has  passed 
the  association  of  a  single  family ;  and  not  yet  submitted  to  the 
authority  of  positive  laws,  or  of  any  acknowledged  magistrate. 
Every  man,  with  them,  is  perfectly  free  to  follow  his  own  incli- 
nations. But  if,  in  doing  this,  he  violates  the  rights  of  another, 
if  the  case  be  slight,  he  is  punished  by  the  disesteem  of  his  so- 
ciety, or,  as  we  say,  by  public  opinion ;  if  serious,  he  is  toma- 
hawked as  a  dangerous  enemy.  Their  leaders  conduct  them  by 
the  influence  of  their  character  only  ;  and  they  follow,  or  not, 
as  they  please,  him  of  whose  character  for  wisdom  or  war  they 
have  the  highest  opinion.  Hence  the  origin  of  the  parties 
among  them  adhering  to  different  leaders,  and  governed  by  their 
advice,  not  by  their  command.  The  Cherokees,  the  only  tribe 
I  know  to  be  contemplating  the  establishment  of  regular  laws, 
magistrates,  and  government,  propose  a  government  of  represen- 


CORRESPONDENCE,  5 

tatives,  elected  from  every  town.  But  of  all  things,  they  least 
think  of  subjecting  themselves  to  the  will  of  oiae  man.  This, 
the  only  instance  of  actual  fact  within  our  knowledge,  will  he 
then  a  beginning  by  republican,  and  not  by  patriarchal  or  mon 
archical  government,  as  speculative  writers  have  generally  con- 
jectured. 

We  have  to  join  in  mutual  congratulations  on  the  appointment 
of  our  friend  Correa,  to  be  minister  or  envoy  of  Portugal,  here. 
This,  I  hope,  will  give  him  to  us  for  life.  Nor  will  it  at  all  inter- 
fere with  his  botanical  rambles  or  journeys.  The  government  of 
Portugal  is  so  peaceable  and  inoflfensive,  that  it  has  never  any  al- 
tercations with  its  friends.  If  their  minister  abroad  writes  them 
once  a  quarter  that  all  is  well,  they  desire  no  more.  I  learn, 
(though  not  from  Correa  himself,)  that  he  thinks  of  paying  us  a 
visit  as  soon  as  he  is  through  his  course  of  lectures.  Not  to  lose 
this  happiness  again  by  my  absence,  I  have  informed  him  I  shall 
set  out  for  Poplar  Forest  the  20th  instant,  and  he  back  the  first 
week  of  July.  I  wish  you  and  he  could  concert  your  movements 
so  us  to  meet  here,  and  that  you  would  make  this  your  head 
quarters.  It  is  a  good  central  point  from  which  to  visit  your  con- 
nections ;  and  you  know  our  practice  of  placing  our  guests  at  their 
ease,  by  showing  them  we  are  so  ourselves  and  that  we  follow 
our  necessary  vocations,  instead  of  fatiguing  them  by  hanging 
unremittingly  on  their  shoulders.  I  salute  you  with  affectionate 
esteem  and  respect. 


TO    WILIilAM    H.    CRAWFORD. 

MoNTioET.T.o,  June  20,  1816 

Dear  Sir, — I  am  about  to  sin  against  all  discretion,  and  know- 
ingly, by  adding  to  the  drudgery  of  your  letter-reading,  this  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  receipt  of  your  favor  of  May  the  31st,  with 
the  papers  it  covered.  I  cannot,  however,  deny  myself  the  grati- 
fication of  expressing  the  satisfaction  I  have  received,  not  only 
from  the  general  statement  of  affairs  at  Paris,  in  yours  of  Decern- 


i  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

ber  the  12th,  1814,  (as  a  matter  of  history  which  I  had  rot  be- 
fore received,)  but  most  especially  and  superlatively,  from  the 
perusal  of  your  letter  of  the  8th  of  the  same  month  to  Mr.  Fisk, 
on  the  subject  of  draw-backs.  This  most  heterogeneous  prin- 
ciple was  transplanted  into  ours  from  the  British  system,  by  a 
man  whose  mind  was  really  powerful,  but  chained  by  native  par- 
tialities to  everything  English  ;  who  had  formed  exaggerated 
ideas  of  the  superior  perfection  of  the  English  constitution,  the 
superior  wisdom  of  their  government,  and  sincerely  believed  it 
for  the  good  of  this  country  to  make  them  their  model  in  every- 
thing ;  without  considering  that  what  might  be  wise  and  good 
for  a  nation  essentially  commercial,  and  entangled  in  complicated 
intercourse  with  numerous  and  powerful  neighbors,  might  not  be 
so  for  one  essentially  agricultural,  and  insulated  by  nature  from 
the  abusive  governments  of  the  old  world. 

The  exercise,  by  our  own  citizens,  of  so  much  commerce  as 
may  suffice  to  exchange  our  superfluities  for  our  wants,  may  be 
advantageous  for  the  whole.  But  it  does  not  follow,  that  with  a 
territory  so  boundless,  it  is  the  interest  of  the  whole  to  become  a 
mere  city  of  London,  to  carry  on  the  business  of  one  half  the 
world  at  the  expeitse  of  eternal  war  with  the  other  half.  The 
agricultural  capacities  of  our  country  constitute  its  distinguishing 
feature  ;  and  the  adapting  our  policy  and  pursuits  to  that,  is  more 
likely  to  make  us  a  numerous  and  happy  people,  than  the  mimicry 
of  an  Amsterdam,  a  Hamburgh,  or  a  city  of  London.  Every  so- 
ciety has  a  right  to  fix  the  fundamental  principles  of  its  associa- 
tion, and  to  say  to  all  individuals,  that,  if  they  contemplate  pur- 
suits beyond  the  limits  of  these  principles,  and  involving  dangers 
which  the  society  chooses  to  avoid,  they  must  go  somewhere  else 
for  their  exercise  ;  that  we  want  no  citizens,  and  still  less  ephem- 
aral  and  pseudo-citizens,  on  such  terms.  We  may  exclude  them 
from  our  territory,  as  we  do  persons  infected  with  disease.  Such 
is  the  situation  of  our  country.  We  have  most  abundant  re- 
sources of  happiness  within  ourselves,  which  we  may  enjoy  in 
peace  and  safety,  without  permitting  a  few  citizens,  infected  with 
the  mania  of  rambling  and  gambling,  to  bring;  danger  on  the 


OOERESPONDENOE.  7 

great  mass  engaged  in  innocent  and  safe  pursuits  at  home.  In 
your  letter  to  Fisk,  you  have  fairly  stated  the  alternatives  be- 
tween which  we  are  to  choose  :  1,  licentious  commerce  and 
gambling  speculations  for  a  few,  with  eternal  war  for  the  many ; 
or,  2,  restricted  commerce,  peace,  and  steady  occupations  for  all. 
If  any  Staie  in  the  Union  will  declare  that  it  prefers  separation 
with  the  first  alternative,  to  a  continuance  in  union  without  it,  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  saying,  "  let  us  separate."  I  would  rather 
the  States  should  withdraw,  which  are  for  unlimited  commerce 
and  war,  and  confederate  with  those  alone  which  are  for  peace 
and  agriculture.  I  know  that  every  nation  in  Europe  would  join 
in  sincere  amity  with  the  latter,  and  hold  the  former  at  arm's 
length,  by  jealousies,  prohibitions,  restrictions,  vexations  and 
war.  No  earthly  consideration  could  induce  my  consent  to  con- 
tract such  a  debt  as  England  has  by  her  wars  for  commerce,  to 
reduce  our  citizens  by  taxes  to  such  wretchedness,  as  that  labor- 
ing sixteen  of  the  twenty-four  hours,  they  are  still  unable  to  af- 
ford themselves  bread,  or  barely  to  earn  as  much  oatmeal  or  po- 
tatoes as  will  keep  soul  and  body  together.  And  all  this  to  feed 
the  avidity  of  a  few  millionary  merchants,  and  to  keep  up  one 
thousand  ships  of  war  for  the  protection  of  their  commercial 
speculations.  I  returned  from  Europe  after  our  government  had 
got  under  way,  and  had  adopted  from  the  British  code  the  law 
of  draw-backs.  I  early  saw  its  effects  in  the  jealousies  and 
vexations  of  Britain  ;  and  that,  retaining  it,  we  must  become  like 
her  an  essentially  warring  nation,  and  meet,  in  the  end,  the  catas- 
trophe impending  over  her.  No  one  can  doubt  that  this  alone 
produced  the  orders  of  council,  the  depredations  which  preceded, 
and  the  war  which  followed  them.  Had  we  carried  but  our  own 
jjroduce,  and  luought  back  but  our  own  wants,  no  nation  would 
liave  troubled  us.  Our  commercial  dashers,  then,  have  already 
cost  us  so  many  thousand  lives,  so  many  millions  of  dollars,  more 
than  their  persons  and  all  their  commerce  were  worth.  When 
war  was  declared,  and  especially  after  Massachusetts,  who  had 
produced  it,  took  side  with  the  enemy  waging  it,  I  pressed  on 
some  confidej?tial  friends  in  Congress  to  avail  us  of  tl  e  happy  op- 


8  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

portuuity  of  repealing  the  draw-back ;  and  I  do  rejoice  to  find 
that  you  are  in  that  sentiment.  You  are  young,  and  may  be  m 
the  way  of  bringing  it  into  effect.  Perhaps  time,  even  yet,  and 
change  of  tone,  (for  there  are  symptoms  of  that  in  Massachusetts,) 
may  not  have  obliterated  altogether  the  sense  of  our  late  feelings 
and  sufferings ;  may  not  have  induced  oblivion  of  the  friends  we 
have  lost,  the  depredations  and  conflagratiojis  we  have  suffered, 
and  the  debts  we  have  incurred,  and  have  to  labor  for  through 
the  lives  of  the  present  generation.  The  earlier  the  repeal  is  pro- 
posed, the  more  it  will  be  befriended  by  all  these  recollections 
and  considerations.  This  is  one  of  three  great  measures  neces- 
sary to  insure  us  permanent  prosperity.  This  preserves  our 
peace.  A  second  should  enable  us  to  meet  any  war,  by  adopting 
the  report  of  the  war  department,  for  placing  the  force  of  the  na- 
tion at  effectual  command ;  and  a  third  should  insure  resources 
of  money  by  the  suppression  of  all  paper  circulation  during  peace, 
and  licensing  that  of  the  nation  alone  during  war.  The  metallic 
medium  of  which  we  should  be  possessed  at  the  commencement 
of  a  war,  would  be  a  sufficient  fund  for  all  the  loans  we  should 
need  through  its  continuance  ;  and  if  the  national  bills  issued,  be 
bottomed  (as  is  indispensable)  on  pledges  of  specific  taxes  for 
their  redemption  within  certain  and  moderate  epochs,  and  be  of 
proper  denominations  for  circulation,  no  interest  on  them  would 
be  necessary  or  just,  because  they  would  answer  to  every  one  the 
purposes  of  the  metallic  money  withdrawn  and  replaced  by  them. 
But  possibly  these  may  be  the  dreams  of  an  old  man,  or  that 
tte  occasions  of  realizing  them  may  have  passed  away  without 
return.  A  government  regulating  itself  by  what  is  wise  and  just 
for  the  many,  uninfluenced  by  the  local  and  selfish  views  of  the 
few  who  direct  their  affairs,  has  not  been  seen  perhaps,  on  earth. 
Or  if  it  existed,  for  a  moment,  at  the  birth  of  ours,  it  would  not 
be  easy  to  fix  the  term  of  its  continuance.  Still,  I  believe  it 
does  exist  here  in  a  greater  degree  than  anywhere  else  ;  and  for 
its  growth  and  continuance,  as  well  as  for  your  personal  health 
and  happiness,  I  offer  sincere  prayers,  with  the  homage  of  my 
respect  and  esteem. 


CORRESPONDEITOE. 


TO    SAMUEL    KERCHIVAIi. 

MoNTiCEt.1,0,  July  12,  1816. 

Sm, — I  duly  received  your  favor  of  June  the  13th,  with  the 
copy  of  the  letters  on  the  calling  a  convention,  on  which  you  are 
pleased  to  ask  my  opinion.  I  have  not  been  in  the  habit  of 
mysterious  reserve  on  any  subject,  nor  of  buttoning  up  my  opin- 
ions within  my  own  doublet.  On  the  contrary,  while  in  public 
service  especially,  I  thought  the  public  entitled  to  frankness,  and 
intimately  to  know  whom  they  employed.  But  I  am  now  re- 
tired :  I  resign  myself,  as  a  passenger,  with  confidence  to  those 
at  present  at  the  helm,  and  ask  but  for  rest,  peace  and  good  will. 
The  question  you  propose,  on  equal  representation,  has  become  a 
party  one,  in  which  I  wish  to  take  no  public  share.  Yet,  if  it  be 
asked  for  your  own  satisfaction  only,  and  not  to  be  quoted  before 
the  public,  I  have  no  motive  to  withhold  it,  and  the  less  from 
you,  as  it  coincides  with  your  own.  At  the  birth  of  our  repub- 
lic, I  committed  that  opinion  to  the  world,  in  the  draught  of  a 
constitution  annexed  to  the  "  Notes  on  Virginia,"  in  which-  a  pro- 
vision was  inserted  for  a  representation  permanently  equal.  The 
infancy  of  the  subject  at  tbat  moment,  and  our  inexj:erience  of 
self-government,  occasioned  gross  departures  in  that  draught  from 
genuine  republican  canons.  In  truth,  the  abuses  of  monarchy 
had  so  much  filled  all  the  space  of  political  contemplation,  that 
we  imagined  everything  republican  which  was  not  monarchy. 
We  had  not  yet  penetrated  to  the  mother  principle,  that  "  govern- 
ments are  republican  only  in  proportion  as  they  embody  the  will 
of  their  people,  and  execute  it."  Hence,  our  first  constitutions 
had  really  no  leading  principles  in  them.  But  experience  and 
reflection  have  but  more  and  more  confirmed  me  in  the  particular 
importance  of  the  equal  representation  then  proposed.  On  that 
point,  then,  I  am  entirely  in  sentiment  with  your  letters ;  and 
only  lament  that  a  copy-right  of  your  pamphlet  prevents  their 
appearance  in  the  newspapers,  where  alone  they  would  be  gen- 
erally read,  and  produce  general  effect.     The  present  vacancy  too, 


10  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

of  other  matter,  would  give  them  place  in  every  paper,  and  bring 
the  question  home  to  every  man's  conscience. 

But  inequality  of  representation  in  both  Houses  of  our  legisla- 
ture, is  not  the  only  republican  heresy  in  this  first  essay  of  our 
revolutionary  patriots  at  forming  a  constitution.  For  let  it  be 
agreed  that  a  government  is  republican  in  proportion  as  every 
member  composing  it  has  his  equal  voice  in  the  direction  of  its 
concerns,  (not  indeed  in  person,  which  would  be  impracticable 
beyond  the  limits  of  a  city,  or  small  township,  but)  by  represen- 
tatives chosen  by  himself,  and  responsible  to  him  at  short  periods, 
and  let  us  bring  to  the  test  of  this  canon  every  branch  of  our 
constitution. 

In  the  legislature,  the  House  of  Representatives  is  chosen  by 
less  than  half  the  people,  and  not  at  all  in  proportion  to  those  who 
do  choose.  The  Senate  are  still  more  disproportionate,  and  for 
long  terms  of  irresponsibility.  In  the  Executive,  the  Governor  is 
entirely  independent  of  the  choice  of  the  people,  and  of  their  con- 
trol ;  his  Council  equally  so,  and  at  best  but  a  fifth  wheel  to  a 
wagon.  In  the  Judiciary,  the  judges  of  the  highest  courts  are 
dependent  on  none  but  themselves.  In  England,  where  judges 
were  named  and  removable  at, the  will  of  an  hereditary  executive, 
from  which  branch  most  misrule  was  feared,  and  has  flowed,  it 
was  a  great  point  gained,  by  fixing  them  for  life,  to  make  them 
independent  of  that  executive.  But  in  a  government  founded  on 
the  public  will,  this  principle  operates  in  an  opposite  direction, 
and  against  that  will.  There,  too,  they  were  still  removable  on 
a  concurrence  of  the  executive  and  legislative  branches.  But  we 
have  made  them  independent  of  the  nation  itself.  They  are 
irremovable,  but  by  their  own  body,  for  any  depravities  of  con- 
duct, and  even  by  their  own  body  for  the  imbecilities  of  dotage. 
The  justices  of  the  inferior  courts  are  self-chosen,  are  for  life,  and 
perpetuate  their  own  body  in  succession  forever,  so  that  a  faction 
once  possessing  themselves  of  the  bench  of  a  county,  can  never 
be  broken  up,  but  hold  their  county  in  chains,  forever  indisso- 
luble. Yet  these  justices  are  the  real  executive  as  well  as  judi- 
ciary, in  all  our  minor  and  most  ordinary  concerns.     They  tax 


US  at  will ;  fill  the  office  of  sheriff,  the  most  important  of  all  the 
executive  officers  of  the  county  ;  name  nearly  all  our  military 
leaders,  which  leaders,  once  named,  are  removable  but  by  them- 
selves. The  juries,  our  judges  of  all  fact,  and  of  law  when  they 
choose  it,  are  not  selected  by  the  people,  nor  amenable  to  them. 
They  are  chosen  by  an  officer  named  by  the  court  and  execu- 
tive. Chosen,  did  I  say  ?  Picked  up  by  the  sheriff  from  the 
loungings  of  the  court  yard,  after  everything  respectable  has  re- 
tired from  it.  Where  then  is  our  republicanism  to  be  found  ? 
Not  in  our  constitution  certainly,  but  merely  in  the  spirit  of  our 
people.  That  would  oblige  even  a  despot  to  govern  us  repub- 
licanly.  Owing  to  this  spirit,  and  to  nothing  in  the  form  of  our 
constitution,  all  things  have  gone  well.  But  this  fact,  so  trium- 
phantly misquoted  by  the  enemies  of  reformation,  is  not  the  fruit 
of  our  constitution,  but  has  prevailed  in  spite  of  it.  Our  func- 
tionaries have  done  well,  because  generally  honest  men.  If  any 
were  not  so,  they  feared  to  show  it. 

But  it  will  be  said,  it  is  easier  to  find  faults  than  to  amend 
them.  I  do  not  think  their  amendment  so  difficult  as  is  pretend- 
ed. Only  lay  down  true  principles,  and  adhere  to  them  inflexi- 
bly. Do  not  be  frightened  into  their  surrender  by  the  alarms  of 
the  timid,  or  the  croakings  of  wealth  against  the  ascendency  of 
the  people.  If  experience  be  called  for,  appeal  to  that  of  our 
fifteen  or  twenty  governments  for  forty  years,  and  show  me 
where  the  people  have  done  half  the  mischief  in  these  forty 
years,  that  a  single  despot  would  have  done  in  a  single  year ;  or 
show  half  the  riots  and  rebellions,  the  crimes  and  the  punish- 
ments, which  have  taken  place  in  any  single  nation,  under  king- 
ly government,  during  the  same  period.  The  true  foundation 
of  republican  government  is  the  equal  right  of  every  citizen,  in 
his  person  and  property,  and  in  their  management.  Try  by  this, 
as  a  tally,  every  provision  of  our  constitution,  and  see  if  it  hangs 
directly  on  the  will  of  the  people.  Reduce  your  legislative  to  a 
convenient  number  for  full,  but  orderly  discussion.  Let  every 
man  who  fights  or  pays,  exercise  his  just  and  equal  right  in  their 
election.     Sul^mit  them  to  approbation  or  rejection  at  short  in- 


1.2  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

tervals.  Let  the  executive  be  chosen  in  the  same  way,  and  for 
the  same  term,  by  those  whose  agent  he  is  to  be  ;  and  leave  no 
screen  of  a  council  behind  which  to  skulk  from  responsibility. 
It  has  been  thought  that  the  people  are  not  competent  electors 
of  judges  learned  in  the  late.  But  I  do  not  know  that  this  is 
true,  and,  if  doubtful,  we  should  follow  principle.  In  this,  as  in 
many  other  elections,  they  would  be  guided  by  reputation,  which 
would  not  err  oftener,  perhaps,  than  the  present  mode  of  appoint- 
ment. In  one  State  of  the  Union,  at  least,  it  has  long  been 
tried,  and  with  the  most  satisfactory  success.  The  judges  of 
Connecticut  have  been  chosen  by  the  people  every  six  months, 
for  nearly  two  centuries,  and  I  believe  there  has  hardly  ever  been 
an  instance  of  change  ;  so  powerful  is  the  curb  of  incessant  re- 
sponsibility. If  prejudice,  however,  derived  from  a  monarch- 
ichal  institution,  is  still  to  prevail  against  the  vital  elective  princi- 
ple of  our  own,  and  if  the  existing  example  among  ourselves  of 
periodical  election  of  judges  by  the  people  be  still  mistrusted, 
let  us  at  least  not  adopt  the  evil,  and  reject  the  good,  of  the  Eng- 
lish precedent ;  let  us  retain  amovability  on  the  concurrence  of 
the  executive  and  legislative  branches,  and  nomination  by  the 
executive  alone.  Nomination  to  office  is  an  executive  function 
To  give  it  to  the  legislature,  as  we  do,  is  a  violation  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  separation  of  powers.  It  swerves  the  members  from 
correctness,  by  temptations  to  intrigue  for  office  themselves,  and 
to  a  corrupt  barter  of  votes  ;  and  destroys  responsibility  by  divid- 
ing it  among  a  multitude.  By  leaving  nomination  in  its  proper 
place,  among  executive  functions,  the  principle  of  the  distribution 
of  power  is  preserved,  and  responsibility  weighs  with  its  heaviest 
force  on  a  single  head. 

The  organization  of  our  county  administrations  may  be  thought 
more  difficult.  But  follow  principle,  and  the  knot  unties  itself. 
Divide  the  counties  into  wards  of  such  size  as  that  every  citizen 
can  attend,  when  called  on,  and  act  in  person.  Ascribe  to  them 
the  government  of  their  wards  in  all  things  relating  to  themselves 
exclusively.  A  justice,  chosen  by  themselves,  in  each,  a  con- 
stable, a  military  company,  a  patrol,  a  school,  the  care  of  their 


COREESPONDENOE.  13 

own  poor,  their  own  portion  of  the  public  roads,  the  choice  of 
one  or  more  jurors  to  serve  in  some  court,  and  the  delivery, 
within  their  own  wards,  of  their  own  votes  for  all  elective  ofB- 
cers  of  higher  sphere,  will  relieve  the  county  administration  of 
nearly  all  its  business,  will  have  it  better  done,  and  by  making 
every  citizen  an  acting  member  of  the  government,  and  in  the 
offices  nearest  and  most  interesting  to  him,  will  attach  him  by 
his  strongest  feelings  to  the  independence  of  his  country,  and  its 
republican  constitution.  The  justices  thus  chosen  by  every 
ward,  would  constitute  the  county  court,  would  do  its  judiciary 
business,  direct  roads  and  bridges,  levy  county  and  poor  rates, 
and  administer  all  the  matters  of  common  interest  to  the  whole 
country.  These  wards,  called  townships  in  New  England,  are 
the  vital  principle  of  their  governments,  and  have  proved  them- 
selves the  wisest  invention  ever  devised  by  the  wit  of  man  for 
the  perfect  exercise  of  self-government,  and  for  its  preservation. 
We  should  thus  marshal  our  government  into,  1,  the  general 
federal  republic,  for  all  concerns  foreign  and  federal ;  2,  that  of 
the  State,  for  what  relates  to  our  own  citizens  exclusively ;  3, 
the  county  republics,  for  the  duties  and  concerns  of  the  county  ; 
and  4,  the  ward  republics,  for  the  small,  and  yet  numerous  and 
interesting  concerns  of  the  neighborhood  ;  and  in  government,  as 
well  as  in  every  other  business  of  life,  it  is  by  division  and  sub- 
division of  duties  alone,  that  all  matters,  great  and  small,  can  be 
managed  to  perfection.  And  the  whole  is  cemented  by  giving 
to  every  citizen,  personally,  a  part  in  the  administration  of  the 
public  affairs. 

The  sum  of  these  amendments  is,  1.  General  suffrage.  2. 
Ei^ual  representation  in  the  legislature.  3.  An  executive  chosen 
by  the  people.  4.  Judges  elective  or  amovable.  5.  Justices, 
jurors,  and  sheriffs  elective.  6.  "Ward  divisions.  And  7.  Peri- 
odical amendments  of  the  constitution. 

I  have  thrown  out  these  as  loose  heads  of  amendment,  for 
consideration  and  correction  ;  and  their  object  is  to  secure  self- 
government  by  the  republicanism  of  our  constitution,  as  well  as 
by  the  spirit  of  the  people  ;  and  to  nourish  and  perpetuate  that 


It  JEi'FBRSON'S    WORKS. 

spirit.  I  am  not  among  those  who  fear  the  people.  They,  and 
not  the  rich,  are  our  dependence  for  continued  freedom.  And  to 
preserve  their  independence,  we  must  not  let  our  rulers  load  us 
with  perpetual  debt.  We  must  make  our  election  between 
economy  and  liberty,  or  profusion  and  servitude.  If  we  run  into 
such  debts,  as  that  we  must  be  taxed  in  our  meat  and  in  our 
drink,  in  our  necessaries  and  our  comforts,  in  our  labors  and  our 
amusements,  for  our  callings  and  our  creeds,  as  the  people  of 
England  are,  our  people,  like  them,  must  come  to  labor  sixteen 
hours  in  the  twenty-four,  give  the  earnings  of  fifteen  of  these  to 
the  government  for  their  debts  and  daily  expenses  ;  and  the  six- 
teenth being  insufficient  to  afi'ord  us  bread,  we  must  live,  as  they 
now  do,  on  oatmeal  and  potatoes ;  have  no  time  to  think,  no 
means  of  calling  the  mismanagers  to  account ;  but  be  glad  to  ob- 
tain subsistence  by  hiring  ourselves  to  rivet  their  chains  on  the 
necks  of  our  fellow-suflTerers.  Our  land-holders,  too,  like  theirs, 
retaining  indeed  the  title  and  stewardship  of  estates  called  theirs, 
but  held  really  in  trust  for  the  treasury,  must  wander,  like  theirs, 
in  foreign  countries,  and  be  contented  with  penury,  obscurity, 
exile,  and  the  glory  of  the  nation.  This  example  reads  to  us 
the  salutary  lesson,  that  private  fortunes  are  destroyed  by  public 
as  well  as  by  private  extravagance.  And  this  is  the  tendency 
of  all  human  governments.  A  departure  from  principle  in  one 
instance  becomes  a  precedent  for  a  second  ;  that  second  for  a 
third  ;  and  so  on,  till  the  bulk  of  the  society  is  reduced  to  be 
mere  automatons  of  misery,  to  have  no  sensibilities  left  but  for 
sinning  and  suifering.  Then  begins,  indeed,  the  bellum  omnium 
in  omnia,  which  some  lAilosophers  observing  to  be  so  general 
in  this,  world,  have  mistaken  it  for  the  natural,  instead  of  the 
abusive  state  of  man.  And  the  fore  horse  of  this  frightful  team 
is  public  debt.  Taxation  follows  that,  and  in  its  train  wretched- 
ness and  oppression. 

Some  men  look  at  constitutions  with  sanctnnonious  reveience, 
and  deem  them  like  the  ark  of  the  covenant,  too  sacred  to  be 
touched.  They  ascribe  to  the  men  of  the  preceding  age  a  wisdom 
more  than  human,  and  suppose- what  they  did  to  be  beyond  amend- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  15 

ment.  I  knew  that  age  well ;  I  belonged  to  it,  and  labored  with 
it.  It  deserved  well  of  its  country.  It  was  very  like  the  pres- 
ent, but  without  the  experience  of  the  present ;  and  forty  years 
of  experience  in  government  is  worth  acentury  of  book-reading  ; 
and  this  they  would  say  themselves,  were  they  to  rise  from  the 
dead.  I  am  certainly  not  an  advocate  for  frequent  and  untried 
changes  in  laws  and  constitutions.  I  think  moderate  imperfec- 
tions had  better  be  borne  with ;  because,  when  once  known,  we 
accommodate  ourselves  to  them,  and  find  practical  means  of  cor- 
recting their  ill  effects.  But  I  know  also,  that  laws  and  institu- 
tions must  go  hand  in  hand  with  the  progress  of  the  human 
mind.  As  that  becomes  more  developed,  more  enlightened,  as 
new  discoveries  are  made,  new  truths  disclosed,  and  manners  and 
opinions  change  with  the  change  of  circumstances,  institutions 
must  advance  also,  and  keep  pace  with  the  times.  We  might 
as  well  require  a  man  to  wear  still  the  coat  which  fitted  him 
when  a  boy,  as  civilized  society  to  remain  ever  under  the  regi- 
men of  their  barbarous  ancestors.  It  is  this  preposterous  idea 
which  has  lately  deluged  Europe  in  blood.  Their  monarchs,  in- 
stead of  wisely  yielding  to  the  gradual  change  of  circumstances, 
of  favoring  progressive  accommodation  to  progressive  improve- 
ment, have  clung  to  old  abuses,  entrenched  themselves  behind 
steady  habits,  and  obliged  their  subjects  to  seek  through  blood 
and  violence  rash  and  ruinous  innovations,  which,  had  they  been 
referred  to  the  peaceful  deliberations  and  collected  wisdom  of  th(3 
nation,  would  have  been  put  into  acceptable  and  salutary  forms. 
Let  us  follow  no  such  examples,  nor  weakly  believe  that  one 
generation  is  not  as  capable  as  another  of  taking  care  of  itself, 
and  of  ordering  its  own  affairs.  Let  us,  as  our  sister  States  have 
done,  avail  ourselves  of  our  reason  and  experienr.e,  to  correct  the 
crude  essays  of  our  first  and  unexperienced,  although  wise,  vir- 
tuous, and  well-meaning  councils.  And  lastly,  let  us  provide  in 
our  constitution  for  its  revision  at  stated  periods.  What  these 
periods  should  be,  nature  herself  indicates.  By  the  European 
tables  of  mortality,  of  the  adults  living  at  any  one  moment  of 
time,  a  majority  will  be  dead  in  about  nineteen  years.     At  the 


16  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

end  of  that  period  then,  a  new  majority  is  come  into  place  ;  or; 
in  other  words,  a  new  generation.  Each  generation  is  as  inde- 
pendent of  the  one  preceding,  as  that  was  of  all  which  had  gone 
before.  It  has  then,  like  them,  a  right  to  choose  for  itself  the 
form  of  government  it  believes  most  promotive  of  its  own  happi- 
ness ;  consequently,  to  accommodate  to  the  circumstances  in 
which  it  finds  itself,  that  received  from  its  predecessors  ;  and  it 
is  for  the  peace  and  good  of  mankind,  that  a  solemn  opportunity 
of  doing  this  every  nineteen  or  twenty  years,  should  be  provided 
by  the  constitution ;  so  that  it  may  be  handed  on,  with  periodi- 
cal repairs,  from  generation  to  generation,  to  the  end  of  time,  if 
anything  human  can  so  long  endure.  It  is  now  forty  years  since 
the  constitution  of  Virginia  was  formed.  The  same  tables  in- 
form us,  that,  within  that  period,  two-thirds  of  the  adults  then 
living  are  now  dead.  Have  then  the  remaining  third,  even  if 
they  had  the  wish,  the  right  to  hold  in  obedience  to  their  will, 
and  to  laws  heretofore  made  by  them,  the  other  two-thirds,  who, 
with  themselves,  compose  the  present  mass  of  adults  ?  If  they 
have  not,  who  has  ?  The  dead  ?  But  the  dead  have  no  rights. 
They  are  nothing  ;  and  nothing  cannot  own  something.  Where 
there  is  no  substance,  there  can  be  no  accident.  This  "^orporeal 
globe,  and  everything  upon  it,  belong  to  its  present  corporeal 
inhabitants,  during  their  generation.  They  alone  have  a  right 
to  direct  what  is  the  concern  of  themselves  alone,  and  to  declare 
the  law  of  that  direction  ;  and  this  declaration  can  only  be  made 
by  their  majority.  That  majority,  then,  has  a  right  to  depute 
representatives  to  a  convention,  and  to  make  the  constitution 
what  they  think  will  be  the  best  for  themselves.  But  how  col- 
lect their  voice  ?  This  is  the  real  difficulty.  If  invited  by  pri- 
vate authority,  or  county  or  district  meetings,  these  divisions  are 
so  large  that  few  will  attend  ;  and  their  voice  will  be  imperfectly, 
or  falsely  pronounced.  Here,  then,  would  be  one  of  the  advan- 
tages of  the  ward  divisions  I  have  ptoposed.  The  mayor  of 
every  ward,  on  a  question  like  the  present,  would  call  his  ward 
together,  take  the  simple  yea  or  nay  of  its  members,  convey  these 
to  the  county  court,  who  would  hand  on  those  of  all  Hs  wards 


OORRESPONDENOE.  17 

to  the  proper  general  authority ;  and  the  voice  of  the  whole  peo- 
ple would  be  thus  fairly,  fully,  and  peaceably  expressed,  dis- 
cussed, and  decided  by  the  common  reason  of  the  society.  If 
this  avenue  be  shut  to  the  call  of  sufferance,  it  will  make  itself 
heard  through  that  of  force,  and  we  shall  go  on,  as  other  nations 
are  doing,  in  the  endless  circle  of  oppression,  rebelUon,  reform- 
ation ;  and  oppression,  rebellion,  reformation,  again  ;  and  so  on 
forever. 

These,  Sir,  are  my  opinions  of  the  governments  we  see  among 
men,  and  of  the  principles  by  which  alone  we  may  prevent  our 
own  from  falling  into  the  same  dreadful  track.  T  have  given 
them  at  greater  length  than  your  letter  called  for.  But  I  cannot 
say  things  by  halves  ;  and  I  confide  them  to  your  honor,  so  to 
use  them  as  to  preserve  me  from  the  gridiron  of  the  public  papers. 
If  you  shall  approve  and  enforce  them,  as  you  have  done  that  of 
equal  representation,  they  may  do  some  good.  If  not,  keep  them 
to  yourself  as  the  effusions  of  withered  age  and  useless  time.  I 
shall,  with  not  the  less  truth,  assure  you  of  my  great  respect  and 
consideration. 


TO    JOHN    TAYLOR. 

MoNrrcELr.o.  July  16,  181B, 

Dear  Sik, — Yours  of  the  10th  is  received,  and  I  have  to  ac- 
knowledge a  copious  supply  of  the  turnip  seed  requested.  Be- 
sides taking  care  myself,  I  shall  endeavor  again  to  commit  it  to 
the  depository  of  the  neighborhood,  generally  found  to  be  the 
best  precaution  against  losing  a  good  thing.  I  will  add  a  word 
on  the  political  part  of  our  letters.  I  believe  we  do  not  differ  on 
either  of  the  points  you  suppose.  On  education  certainly  not ; 
of  which  the  proofs  are  my  bill  for  the  diffusion  of  knowledge, 
proposed  near  forty  years  ago,  and  my  uniform  endeavors,  to  this 
day,  to  get  our  counties  divided  into  wards,  one  of  the  principal 
objects  of  which  is,  the  establishment  of  a  primary  school  in 
each.  But  education  not  being  a  branch  of  municipal  govern- 
ment, but,  like  the  other  arts  and  sciences,  an  accident  only,  I  did 

vol..  VII.  2 


18  JEFFEESOIf'S    WORKS. 

not  place  it,  with  election,  as  a  fundamental  member  i  i  the  struc- 
ture of  government.  Nor,  I  believe,  do  we  differ  as  to  the  county 
courts.  I  acknowledge  the  value  of  f  his  institution  ;  that  it  is  in 
truth  our  principal  executive  and  judiciary,  and  that  it  does 
much  for  little  pecuniary  reward.  It  is  their  self-appointment  I 
wish  to  correct ;  to  find  some  means  of  breaking  up  a  cabal, 
when  such  a  one  gets  possession  of  the  bench.  When  this  takes 
place,  it  becomes  the  most  afflicting  of  tyrannies,  because  its  pow- 
ers are  so  various,  and  exercised  on  everything  most  immediately 
around  us.  And  how  many  instances  have  you  and  I  known  of 
these  monopolies  of  coimty  administration  ?  I  knew  a  county 
in  which  a  particular  family  (a  numerous  one)  got  possession  of 
the  bench,  and  for  a  whole  generation  never  admitted  a  man 
on  it  who  was  not  of  its  clan  or  connexion.  I  know  a  county 
now  of  .one  thousand  and  five  hundred  militia,  of  which  sixty 
are  federalists.  Its  court  is  of  thirty  members,  of  whom  twenty 
are  federalists,  (every  third  man  of  the  sect.)  There  are  large 
and  populous  districts  in  it  without  a  justice,  because  without  a 
federalist  for  appointment ;  the  militia  are  as  disproportionably 
under  federal  officers.  And  there  is  no  authority  on  earth  which 
can  break  up  this  junto,  short  of  a  general  convention.  The  re- 
maining one  thousand  four  hundred  and  forty,  free,  fighting,  and 
paying  citizens,  are  governed  by  men  neither  of  their  choice  or 
confidence,  and  without  a  hope  of  relief.  They  are  certainly 
excluded  from  the  blessings  of  a  free  government  for  life,  and  in- 
definitely, for  aught  the  constitution  has  provided.  This  solecism 
may  be  called  anything  but  republican,  and  ought  undoubtedly 
to  be  corrected.  I  salute  you  with  constant  friendship  and  re- 
spect. 


TO    HIS    EXCELLENCY    GOVERNOR    PLUMEK. 

JloNTiCKLUi,  July  21.  T8I6. 

I  thank  you,  Sir,  for  the  copy  you  have  been  so  good  as  to 
send  me,  of  your  late  speech  to  the  Legislature  of  your  State 
which  I  have  read  a  second  time  with  great  pleasure,  as  I  had  be- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  19 

fore  done  in  the  public  papers.  It  is  replete  with  sound  princi- 
ples, and  truly  republican.  Some  articles,  too,  are  worthy  of  pe- 
culiar notice.  The  idea  that  institutions  established  for  the  use 
of  the  nation  cannot  be  touched  nor  modified,  even  to  make  them 
answer  their  end,  because  of  rights  gratuitously  supposed  in  those 
employed  to  manage  them  in  trust  for  the  public,  may  perhaps 
be  a  salutary  provision  against  the  abuses  of  a  monarch,  but  is 
most  absurd  against  the  nation  itself.  Yet  our  lawyers  and 
priests  generally  inculcate  this  doctrine,  and  suppose  that  preced- 
ing generations  held  the  earth  more  freely  than  we  do  ;  had  a 
right  to  impose  laws  on  us,  unalterable  by  ourselves,  and  that  we, 
in  like  manner,  can  make  laws  and  impose  burthens  on  future 
generations,  which  they  will  have  no  right  to  alter  ;  in  fine,  that 
the  earth  belongs  to  the  dead  and  not  the  living.  I  remark  also 
the  phenomenon  of  a  chief  magistrate  recommending  the  reduc- 
tion of  his  own  compensation.  This  is  a  solecism  of  which  the 
wisdom  of  our  late  Congress  cannot  be  accused.  I,  however, 
place  economy  among  the  first  and  most  important  of  republican 
virtues,  and  public  debt  as  the  greatest  of  the  dangers  to  be 
feared.  We  see  in  England  the  consequences  of  the  want  of  it. 
their  laborers  reduced  to  live  on  a  penny  in  the  shilling  of  their 
earnings,  to  give  up  bread,  and  resort  to  oatmeal  and  potatoes  foi 
food  ;  and  their  landholders  exiling  themselves  to  live  in  penury 
and  obscurity  abroad,  because  at  home  the  government  must  have 
all  the  clear  profits  of  their  land.  In  fact,  they  see  the  fee  simple 
of  the  island  transferred  to  the  public  creditors,  all  its  profits 
going  to  them  for  the  interest  of  their  debts.  Our  laborers  and 
landholders  must  come  to  this  also,  unless  they  severely  adhere 
to  the  economy  you  recommend.  I  salute  you  with  entire  es- 
teem and  respect. 


TO  DOCTOK  LOGAN. 

MoNTiCELLO,  July  23,  1816. 

Deab  Sir, — I  have  received  and  read  with  great  pleasure  the 
account  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me  of  the  interview 


20  JEFFERSON'S    "WORKS. 

between  the  Emperor  Alexander  and  Mr.  Clarkson,  which  I  novr 
return,  as  it  is  in  manuscript.  It  shows  great  condescension  of 
character  on  the  part  of  the  Emperor,  and  power  of  mind  also,  to 
be  able  to  abdicate  the  artificial  distance  between  himself  and 
other  good,  able  men,  and  to  converse  as  on  equal  ground.  This 
conversation  too,  taken  with  his  late  Christian  league,  seeins  to 
bespeak  in  him  something  like  a  sectarian  piety  ;  his  character  is 
undoubtedly  good,  and  the  world,  I  think,  may  expect  good  effects 
from  it.  I  have  no  doubt  that  his  firmness  in  favor  of  France, 
after  the  deposition  of  Bonaparte,  has  saved  that  country  from 
evils  still  more  severe  than  she  is  suffering,  and  perhaps  even  from 
partition.  I  sincerely  wish  that  the  history  of  the  secret  proced- 
ings  at  Vienna  may  become  known,  and  may  reconcile  to  our 
good  opinion  of  him  his  participation  in  the  demolition  of  ancient 
and  independent  States,  transferring  them  and  their  inhabitants 
as  farms  and  stocks  of  cattle  at  a  market  to  other  owners,  and 
even  taking  a  part  of  the  spoil  to  himself.  It  is  possible  to  sup- 
pose a  case  excusing  this,  and  my  partiality  for  his  character  en- 
courages me  to  expect  it,  and  to  impute  to  others,  known  to  have 
no  moral  scruples,  the  crimes  of  that  conclave,  who,  under  pre- 
tence of  punishing  the  atrocities  of  Bonaparte,  reached  them 
themselves,  and  proved  that  with  equal  power  they  were  equally 
flagitious.  But  let  us  turn  with  abhorrence  from  these  sceptered 
Scelerats,  and  disregarding  our  own  petty  diffences  of  opinion 
about  men  and  measures,  let  us  cling  in  mass  to  our  country  and 
to  one  another,  and  bid  defiance,  as  we  can  if  united,  to  the  plun- 
dering combinations  of  the  old  world.  Present  me  affectionately 
and  respectfully  to  Mrs.  Logan,  and  accept  the  assurance  of  mv 
friendship  and  best  wishes. 


TO    MB.    DELAPLAINE. 

MoNTroELT.o,  July  26,  I81S. 

Deak  Sir, — In  compliance  with  the  request  of  your  letter  of 
the  6th  inst.,  with  respect  to  Peyton  Randolph,  I  have  to  ob.serve 


CORRESPONDENCE.  21 

that  the  difference  of  age  between  him  and  myself  admitted  my 
knowing  little  of  his  early  life,  except  what  I  accidentally  caught 
from  occasional  conversations.  I  was  a  student  at  college  when 
he  was  already  Attorney  General  at  the  bar,  and  a  man  of  es- 
tablished years  ;  and  I  had  no  intimacy  with  him  until  I  went  to 
the  bar  myself,  when,  I  suppose,  he  must  have  been  upwards  of 
forty  ;  from  that  time,  and  especially  after  I  became  a  member 
of  the  legislature,  until  his  death,  our  intimacy  was  cordial,  and 
I  was  with  him  when  he  died.  Under  these  circumstances,  I 
have  committed  to  writing  as  many  incidents  of  his  life  as  memory 
enabled  me  to  do,  and  to  give  faith  to  the  many  and  excellent 
qualities  he  possessed,  I  have  mentioned  those  minor  ones  which 
he  did  not  possess  ;  considering  true  history,  in  which  all  will  be 
believed,  as  preferable  to  unqualified  panegyric,  in  which  nothing 
is  believed.  I  avoided,  too,  the  mention  of  trivial  incidents, 
which,  by  not  distinguishing,  disparage  a  character ;  but  I  have 
not  been  able  to  state  early  dates.  Before  forwarding  this  paper 
to  you,  I  received  a  letter  from  Peyton  Randolph,  his  great 
nephew,  repeating  the  request  you  had  made.  I  therefore  put 
the  paper  under  a  blank  cover,  addressed  to  you,  unsealed, 
and  sent  it  to  Peyton  Randolph,  that  he  might  see  what  dates 
as  well  as  what  incidents  might  be  collected,  supplementary  to 
mine,  and  correct  any  which  I  had  inexactly  stated  ;  circum- 
stances may  have  been  misremembered,  but  nothing,  I  think,  ot 
substance.  This  account  of  Peyton  Randolph,  therefore,  you 
may  expect  to  be  forwarded  by  his  nephew. 

You  requested  me  when  here,  to  communicate  to  you  the  par- 
ticulars of  two  transactions  in  which  I  was  myself  an  agent,  to 
wit :  the  coup  de  main  of  Arnold  on  Richmond,  and  Tarleton's 
on  Charlottesville.  I  now  enclose  them,  detailed  with  an  exact- 
ness on  which  you  may  rely  with  an  entire  confidence.  Buf, 
having  an  insuperable  aversion  to  be  drawn  into  controversy  in 
the  public  papers,  I  must  request  not  to  be  quoted  either  as  to 
these  or  the  account  of  Peyton  Randolph.  Accept  the  assur- 
ances of  my  esteem  and  respect. 


22  JEL-FEKSON    S    WORKS. 


TO  SIR  JOHN  SINCLAIR. 

MoNTicKi-i.o,  July  SI.  1816. 

Dear  Sib, — Your  favor  of  November  1st  came  but  lately  to 
my  hand.  It  covered  a  prospectus  of  your  code  of  health  and 
longevity,  a  great  and  useful  work,  which  I  shall  be  happy  to 
see  brought  to  a  conclusion.  Like  our  good  old  Franklin,  your 
labors  and  science  go  all  to  the  utilities  of  human  life. 

I  reciprocate  congratulations  with  you  sincerely  on  the  restora- 
tion of  peace  between  our  two  nations.  And  why  should  there 
have  been  war  ?  for  the  party  to  which  the  blame  is  to  be  imput- 
ed, we  appeal  to  the  "  Exposition  of  the  causes  and  character  of 
the  war,"  a  pamphlet  which,  we  are  told,  has  gone  through  some 
editions  with  you.  If  that  does  not  justify  us,  then  the  blame  is 
ours.  But  let  all  this  be  forgotten ;  and  let  both  parties  now 
count  soberly  the  value  of  mutual  friendship.  I  am  satisfied  both 
will  find  that  no  advantage  either  can  derive  from  any  act  of  in- 
justice whatever,  will  be  of  equal  value  with  those  flowing  from 
friendly  intercourse.  Both  ought  to  wish  for  peace  and  cordial 
friendship ;  we,  because  you  can  do  us  more  harm  than  any  other 
nation  ;  and  you,  because  we  can  do  you  more  good  than  any 
other.  Our  growth  is  now  so  well  established  by  regular  enu- 
merations through  a  course  of  forty  years,  and  the  same  grounds 
of  continuance  so  likely  to  endure  for  a  much  longer  period,  that, 
speaking  in  round  numbers,  we  may  safely  call  ourselves  twenty 
millions  in  twenty  years,  and  forty  millions  in  forty  years.  Many 
of  the  statesmen  now  living  saw  the  commencement  of  the  first 
term,  and  many  now  living  will  see  the  end  of  the  second.  It  is 
not  then  a  mere  concern  of  posterity  ;  a  third  of  those  now  in  life 
will  see  that  day.  Of  what  importance  then  to  you  must  such  a 
nation  be,  whether  as  friends  or  foes.  But  is  their  friendship,  dear 
Sir,  to  be  obtained  by  the  irritating  policy  of  fomenting  among 
us  party  discord,  and  a ^  teasing  opposition;  by  bribing  traitors, 
vvhose  sale  of  themselves  proves  they  would  sell  their  pm-chasers 
also,  if  their  treacheries  were  worth  a  price  ?  How  much  cheaper 
would  it  be,  how  much  easier,  more  honorable,  more  magnani- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  23 

mous  and  secure,  to  gain  the  government  itself,  by  a  moral,  a 
friendly,  and  respectful  course  of  conduct,  which  is  all  they 
would  ask  for  a  cordial  and  faithful  return.  I  know  the  difficul- 
ties arising  from  the  irritation,  the  exasperation  produced  on  both 
sides  by  the  late  war.  It  is  great  with  you,  as  I  judge  from  your 
newspapers ;  and  greater  with  us,  as  I  see  myself.  The  reason 
lies  in  the  different  degrees  in  which  the  war  has  acted  on  us. 
To  your  people  it  ,has  been  a  matter  of  distant  history  only,  a 
mere  war  in  the  cafnatic  ;  with  us  it  has  reached  the  bosom  of 
every  man,  woman  and  child.  The  maritime  parts  have  felt  it 
in  the  conflagration  of  their  houses,  and  towns,  and  desolation 
of  their  farms ;  the  borderers  in  the  massacres  and  scalpings  of 
their  husbands,  wives  and  children  ;  and  the  middle  parts  in  their 
personal  labors  and  losses  in  defence  of  both  froiitiers,  and  the  re- 
volting scenes  they  have  there  witnessed.  It  is  not  wonderful 
then,  if  their  irritations  are  extreme.  Yet  time  and  prudence  on 
the  part  of  the  two  governments  may  get  over  these.  Manifesta- 
tions of  cordiality  between  them,  friendly  and  kind  offices  made 
visible  to  the  people  on  both  sides,  will  mollify  their  feelings, 
and  second  the  wishes  of  their  functionaries  to  cultivate  peace, 
and  promote  mutual  interest.  That  these  dispositions  have  been 
«=trong  on  our  part,  in  every  administration  from  the  first  to  ths 
present  one,  that  we  would  at  any  time  have  gone  our  full  half- 
way to  meet  them,  if  a  single  step  in  advance  had  been  taken  hy 
the  other  party,  I  can  affirm  of  my  own  intimate  knowledge  of 
the  fact.  During  the  first  year  of  my  own  administration,  I 
thought  I  discovered  in  the  conduct  of  Mr.  Addington  some 
marks  of  comity  towards  us,  and  a  willingness  to  extend  to  us 
the  decencies  and  duties  observed  towards  other  nations.  My 
desire  to  catch  at  this,  and  to  improve  it  for  the  benefit  of  my 
own  country,  induced  me,  in  addition  to  the  official  declarations 
from  the  Secretary  of  State,  to  write  with  my  own  hand  to  Mr. 
King,  then  our  Minister  Plenipotentiary  at  London,  in  the  follow- 
ing words :  "  I  avail  myself  of  this  occasion  to  assure  you  of 
my  perfect  satisfaction  with  the  manner  in  which  you  have  con- 
uucted  the  several  matters  committed  to  you  by  us ;  and  to  ex- 


24  JEFFERSOJT'S    WORKS. 

press  my  hope  that  through  your  agency,  we  may  be  able  to  re- 
move everything  inauspicious  to  a  cordial  friendship  between  this 
country,  and  the  one  in  which  you  are  stationed ;  a  friendship 
dictated  by  too  many  considerations  not  to  be  felt  by  the  wise 
and  the  dispassionate  of  both  nations.  It  is,  therefore,  with  the 
sincerest  .pleasure  I  have  observed  on  the  part-  of  the  British  gov- 
ernment various  manifestations  of  a  just  and  friendly  disposition 
towards  us ;  'we  wish  to  cultivate  peace  and  friendship  with  all 
nations,  believing  that  course  most  conducive  to  the  welfare  of 
our  own ;  it  is  natural  that  these  friendships  should  bear  some 
proportion  to  the  common  interests  of  the  parties.  The  interest- 
ing relations  between  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  are 
certainly  of  the  first  order,  and  as  such  are  estimated,  and  will  be 
faithfully  cultivated  by  us.  These  sentiments  have  been  com- 
municated to  you  from  time  to  time,  in  the  official  correspond- 
ence of  the  Secretary  of  State  ;  but  I  have  thought  it  might  not 
be  unacceptable  to  be  assured  that  they  perfectly  concur  with  my 
own  personal  convictions,  both  in  relation  to  yourself,  and  the 
country  in  which  you  are." 

My  expectation  was  that  Mr.  King  would  show  this  lettei  to 
Mr.  Addington,  and  that  it  would  be  received  by  him  as  an  over- 
ture towards  a  cordial  understanding  between  the  two  countries. 
He  left  the  ministry,  however,  and  I  never  heard  more  of  it,  and 
certainly  never  perceived  any  good  eifect  from  it.  I  know  that 
in  the  present  temper,  the  boastful,  the  insolent,  and  the  menda- 
cious newspapers  on  both  sides,  will  present  serious  impediments. 
Ours  will  be  insulting  your  public  authorities,  and  boasting  of 
victories ;  and  yours  will  not  be  sparing  of  provocations  and 
abuses  of  us.  But  if  those  at  our  helms  could  not  place  them- 
selves above  these  pitiful  notices,  and  throwing  aside  all  personal 
feelings,  look  only  to  the  interests  of  their  nations,  they  would  be 
unequal  to  the  trusts  confided  to  them.  I  am  equally  confident, 
on  our  part,  in  the  administration  now  in  place,  as  in  that  which 
will  succeed  it ;  and  that  if  friendship  is  not  hereafter  sincerely 
cultivated,  it  will  not  be  their  fault.  I  will  not,  however,  dis- 
guise that  the  settlement  of  the  practice  of  impressing  our  citi- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  25 

zens  is  a  sirie  qua  non,  a  preliminary,  withoiit  which  treaties  of 
peace  are  but  truces.  But  it  is  impossible  that  reasonable  dispo- 
sitions on  both  parts  should  not  remove  this  stumbling  block, 
which  unremoved,  will  be  an  eternal  obstacle  to  peace,  and  lead 
finally  to  the  deletion  of  the  one  or  the  other  nation.  The  reg- 
ulations necessary  to  keep  your  own  seamen  to  yourselves  are 
those  which  our  interests  would  lead  us  to  adopt,  and  that  inter- 
est would  be  a  guarantee  of  their  observance ;  and  the  transfer 
of  these  questions  ffom  the  cognizance  of  their  naval  command- 
ers to  the  governments  themselves,  would  be  but  an  act  of  mutual 
as  well  as  of  self-respect 

I  did  not  mean,  when  I  began  my  letter,  to  have  indulged  my 
pen  so  far  on  subjects  with  which  I  have  long  ceased  to  have 
connection  ;  but  it  may  do  good,  and  I  will  let  it  go,  for  although 
what  I  write  is  from  no  personal  privity  with  the  views  or  wishes 
of  our  government,  yet  believing  them  to  be  what  they  ought  to 
be,  and  confident  in  their  wisdom  and  integrity,  I  am  sure  I 
hazard  no  deception  in  what  I  have  said  of  them,  and  I  shall  be 
happy  indeed  if  some  good  shall  result  to  both  our  countries, 
from  this  renewal  of  our  correspondence  and  ancient  friendship. 
1  recall  with  great  pleasure  the  days  of  our  former  intercourse, 
personal  and  epistolary,  and  can  assure  you  with  truth  that  in  no 
instant  of  time  has  there  been  any  abatement  of  my  great  esteem 
and  respect  for  you. 


TO    MB.    ADAMS. 

MONTICKI.LO,  AuSfUSt.   I.    ISl.fl. 


Dear  Sib, — Your  two  philosophical  letters  of  May  4th  and 
6th  have  been  too  long  in  my  carton  of  "  letters  to  be  an- 
swered." To  the  question,  indeed,  on  the  utility  of  grief,  no  an- 
swer remains  to  be  given.  You  have  exhausted  the  subject.  I 
see  that,  with  the  other  evils  of  Ufe,  it  is  destined  to  temper  the 
cup  we  are  to  drink. 


26  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Two  trns  by  Jore's  high  throne  have  ever  stood, 
The  source  of  evil  one,  and  one  of  good ; 
From  thence  the  cup  of  mortal  man  he  fills, 
Blessings  to  these,  to  those  distributes  ills ;. 
To  most  he  mingles  both. 

Putting  to  myself  your  question,  •would  I  agree  to  live  mj 
seventy-three  years  over  again  forever  ?  I  hesitate  to  say.  With 
Chew's  limitations  from  twenty-five  to  sixty,  I  would  say  yes  ; 
and  I  might  go  further  back,  but  not  come  lower  down.  For, 
at  the  latter  period,  with  most  of  us,  the  powers  of  life  are  sensi- 
bly on  the  wane,  sight  becomes  dim,  hearing  dull,  memory  con- 
stantly enlarging  its  frightful  blank  and  parting  with  all  we  have 
ever  seen  or  known,  spirits  evaporate,  bodily  debility  creeps  on 
palsying  every  limb,  and  so  faculty  after  faculty  quits  us,  and 
where  then  is  life  ?  If,  in  its  full  rigcr,  of  good  as  well  as  evil, 
your  friend  Vassall  could  doubt  its  value,  it  must  be  purely  a  neg- 
ative quantity  when  its  evils  alone  remain.  Yet  I  do  not  go 
into  his  opinion  entirely.  I  do  not  agree  that  an  age  of  pleasure 
is  no  compensation  for  a  moment  of  pain.  1  think,  with  you, 
that  life  is  a  fair  matter  of  account,  and  the  balance  often,  nay 
generally,  in  its  favor.  It  is  not  indeed  easy,  by  calculation  of 
intensity  and  time,  to  apply  a  common  measure,  or  to  fix  the 
par  between  pleasure  and  pain ;  yet  it  exists,  and  is  measurable. 
On  the  question,  for  example,  whether  to  be  cut  for  the  stone  r 
The  young,  with  a  longer  prospect  of  years,  think  these  over- 
balance the  pam  of  the  operation.  Dr.  Franklin,  at  the  age  of 
eighty,  thought  his  residuum  of  life  not  worth  that  price.  1 
should  have  thought  with  him,  even  taking  the  stone  out  of  the 
scale.  There  is  a  ripeness  of  time  for  death,  regarding  others  as 
well  as  ourselves,  when  it  is  reasonable  we  should  drop  off,  and 
make  room  for  another  growth.  When  we  have  lived  our  gener- 
ation out,  we  should  not  wish  to  encroach  on  another.  I  enjoy 
good  health  ;  I  am  happy  in  what  is  around  me,  yet  I  assure  you 
I  am  ripe  for  leaving  all,  this  year,  this  day,  this  hour.  If  it 
could  be  doubted  whether  we  would  go  back  to  twenty-five, 
bow  can  it  be  whether  we  would  go  forward  from  seventy -three  } 


COEEESPONDENOE.  27 

Bodily  decay  is  gloomy  in  prospect,  but  of  all  humai.  contem- 
plations the  most  abhorrent  is  body  without  mind.  Perhaps, 
however,  I  might  accept  of  time  to  read  Grimm  before  I  go. 
Fifteen  volumes  of  anecdotes  and  incidents,  within  the  compass 
of  my  own  time  and  cognizance,  written  by  a  man  of  genius,  of 
taste,  of  point,  an  acquaintance,  the  measure  and  traverses  of 
whose  mind  I  know,  could  not  fail  to  turn  the  scale  in  favor  of 
life  during  their  perusal.  I  must  write  to  Ticknor  to  add  it  to 
my  catalogue,  and  hold  on  till  it  comes.  There  is  a  Mr.  Vander- 
kemp  of  New  York,  a  correspondent,  I  believe,  of  yours,  with 
whom  I  have  exchanged  some  letters  without  knowing  who  he 
is.  Will  you  tell  me  ?  I  know  nothing  of  the  history  of  the 
Jesuits  you  mention  in  four  volumes.  Is  it  a  good  one  ?  I  dis- 
like, with  you,  their  restoration,  because  it  marks  a  retrograde 
step  from  light  towards  darkness.  We  shall  have  our  follies 
without  doubt.  Some  one  or  more  of  them  will  always  be 
afloat.  But  ours  will  be  the  follies  of  enthusiasm,  not  of  bigotry, 
not  of  Jesuitism.  Bigotry  is  the  disease  of  ignorance,  of  morbid 
minds ;  enthusiasm  of  the  free  and  buoyant.  Education  and 
free  discussion  are  the  antidotes  of  both.  We  are  destined  to  be 
a  barrier  against  the  returns  of  ignorance  and  barbarism.  Old 
Europe  will  have  to  lean  on  our  shoulders,  and  to  hobble  along 
by  our  side,  under  the  monkish  trammels  of  priests  and  kings, 
as  she  can.  What  a  colossus  shall  we  be  when  the  southern 
continent  comes  up  to  our  mark  !  What  a  stand  will  it  secure  as 
a  ralliance  for  the  reason  and  freedom  of  the  globe  !  I  like  the 
dreams  of  the  future  better  than  the  history  of  the  past, — so  good 
night !  I  will  dream  on,  always  fancying  that  Mrs.  Adams  and 
yourself  are  by  my  side  marking  the  progress  and  the  obliqui- 
ties of  ages  and  countries. 


TO    MBS.    M.    HARBISON    SMITH. 

MoNTio'isLi.o,  August  6,  1816. 

I  have  received,  dear  Madam,  your  very  friendly  letter  of  Jidy 
21st,  and  assure  you  that  I  feel  with  deep  sensibility  its  kind  ex- 


28  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

pressioi^s  tt  wards  myself,  and  the  more  as  from  a  person  than 
whom  no  others  could  be  more  in  sympathy  with  my  own  af- 
fections. I  often  call  to  mind  the  occasions  of  knowing  your 
worth,  which  the  societies  of  Washington  furnished ;  and  none 
more  than  those  derived  from  your  much  valued  visit  to  Monti- 
cello.  I  recognize  the  same  motives  of  goodness  in  the  solici- 
tude you  express  on  the  rumor  supposed  to  proceed  from  a  letter 
of  mine  to  Charles  Thomson,  on  the  subject  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. It  is  true  that,  in  writing  to  the  translator  of  the  Bible 
and  Testament,  that  subject  was  mentioned  ;  but  equally  so  that 
no  adherence  to  any  particular  mode  of  Christianity  "was  there 
expressed,  nor  any  change  of  opinions  suggested.  A  change 
from  what  ?  the  priests  indeed  have  heretofore  thought  proper  to 
ascribe  to  me  religious,  or  rather  anti-religious  sentiments,  of 
their  own  fabric,  but  such  as  soothed  their  resentments  against  the 
act  of  Virginia  for  establishing  religious  freedom.  They  wished 
him  to  be  thought  atheist,  deist,  or  devil,  who  could  advocate 
freedom  from  their  religious  dictations.  But  I  have  ever  thought 
religion  a  concern  purely  between  our  God  and  our  consciences, 
for  which  we  were  accountable  to  him,  and  not  to  the  priests. 
I  never  told  my  own  religion,  nor  scrutinized  that  of  another.  I 
never  attempted  to  make  a  convert,  nor  wished  to  change  anoth- 
er's creed.  I  have  ever  judged  of  the  religion  of  others  by  their 
lives,  and  by  this  test,  my  dear  Madam,  I  have  been  satisfied 
yours  must  be  an  excellent  one,  to  have  produced  a  life  of  such 
exemplary  virtue  and  correctness.  For  it  is  in  our  lives,  and  not 
from  our  words,  that  our  religion  must  be  read.  By  the  same 
test  the  world  must  judge  me.  But  this  does  not  satisfy  the 
priesthood.  They  must  have  a  positive,  a  declared  assent  to  all 
their  interested  absurdities.  My  opinion  is  that  there  would 
never  have  been  an  infidel,  if  there  had  never  been  a  priest. 
The  artificial  structures  they  have  built  on  the  purest  of  all  moral 
systems,  for  the  purpose  of  deriving  from  it  pence  and  power,  re- 
volts those  who  think  for  themselves,  and  who  read  in  that  sys- 
tem only  what  is  really  there.  These,  therefore,  they  brand  with 
such  nick-names  as  their  enmity  choses  gratuitously  to  impute.- 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


29 


I  have  left  the  world,  in  silence,  to  judge  of  causes  from  their 
effects  ;  and  I  am  consoled  in  this  course,  my  dear  friend,  when 
I  perceive  the  candor  with  which  I  am  judged  by  your  justice 
and  discernment ;  and  that,  notwithstanding  the  slanders  of  the 
saints,  my  fellow  citizens  have  thought  me  worthy  of  trusts. 
The  imputations  of  irreligion  having  spent  their  force  ;  they  think 
an  imputation  of  change  might  now  be  turned  to  account  as  a 
bolster  for  their  duperies.  I  shall  leave  them,  as  heretofore,  to 
grope  on  in  the  dark. 

Our  family  at  Monticello  is  all  in  good  health  ;  Ellen  speaking 
of  you  with  affection,  and  Mrs.  Randolph  always  regretting  the 
accident  which  so  far  deprived  her  of  the  happiness  of  your  for- 
mer visit.  She  still  cherishes  the  hope  of  some  future  renewal 
of  that  kindness ;  in  which  we  all  join  her,  as  in  the  assurances 
of  affectionate  attachment  and  respect. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JErrEHSON. 

Quivcv,  August  9,  1816. 

Deab  Sir, — The  biography  of  Mr.  Vander  Kemp  would  re- 
quire a  volume  which  I  could  not  write  if  a  million  were  offered 
me  as  a  reward  for  the  work.  After  a  learned  and  scientific  ed- 
ucation he  entered  the  army  in  Holland,  and  served  as  captain, 
with  reputation ;  but  loving  books  more  than  arms  he  resigned 
his  commission  and  became  a  preacher.  My  acquaintance  with 
him  commenced  at  Leydeh  in  1790.  He  was  then  minister  of 
the  Menonist  congregation,  the  richest  in  Europe ;  in  that  city, 
where  he  was  celebrated' as  the  most  elegant  writer  in  the  Dutch 
language,  he  was  the  intimate  friend  of  Luzac  and  De  Gyse- 
caar.  In  1788,  when  the  King  of  Prussia  threatened  Holland 
with  invasion,  his  party  insisted  on  his  taking  a  command  in  the 
army  of  defence,  and  he  was  appointed  to  the  command  of  the 
most  exposed  and  most  important  post  in  the  seven  provinces. 
He  was  soon  surrounded  by  the  Prussian  forces ;  but  he  defended 
his  forti'^ss  with  a  prudence,  fortitude,  patience,  and  perseverance, 


30  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

which  were  admired  by  all  Europe  ;  till,  abandoned  by  his  na- 
tion, destitute  of  provisions  and  ammunition,  still  refusing  to  sur- 
render, he  was  offered  the  most  honorable  capitulation.  He  ac- 
cepted it ;  was  offered  very  advantageous  proposals  ;  but  despair- 
ing of  the  liberties  of  his  country,  he  retired  to  Antwerp,  deter- 
mined to  emigrate  to  New  York ;  wrote  to  me  in  London,  re- 
questing letters  of  introduction.  I  sent  him  letters  to  Governor 
Clinton,  and  several  others  of  our  little  great  men.  His  history 
in  .this  country  is  equally  curious  and  affecting.  He  left  property 
in  Holland,  which  the  revolutions  there  have  anr.''^'lited ;  and  I 
fear  is  now  pinched  with  poverty.  His  head  is  deeply  learned 
and  his  heart  is  pure.    I  scarcely  know  a  more  amiable  character. 

*jfc  Jt.  Jt.  Jfc.  .It.  -M- 

T^  TP  'Tr  TV"  ^r  "re" 

He  has  written  to  me  occasionally,  and  I  have  answered  his 
letters  in  great  haste.  You  may  well  suppose  that  such  a  man 
has  not  always  been  able  to  understand  our  American  politics. 
Nor  have  I.  Had  he  been  as  great  a  master  of  our  language  as 
he  was  of  his  own,  he  would  have  been  at  this  day  one  of  the 
most  conspicuous  characters  in  the  United  States. 

So  much  for  Vander  Kemp  ;  now  for  your  letter  of  August  1st. 
Your  poet,  the  Ionian  I  suppose,  ought  to  have  told  us  whether 
Jove,  in  the  distribution  of  good  and  evil  from  his  two  urns,  ob- 
serves any  rule  of  equity  or  not ;  whether  he  thunders  out  flames 
of  eternal  fire  on  the  many,  and  power,  and  glory,  and  felicity  on 
the  few,  without  any  consideration  of  justice  ? 

Let  us  state  a  few  questions  sub  rosd. 

1.  Would  you  accept  a  life,  if  offered  you,  of  equal  pleasure 
and  pain  ?  For  example.  One  million  of  moments  of  pleasure,  and 
one  million  of  moments  of  pain  !  (1,000,000  moments  of  pleas- 
use=  1,000,000  moments  of  pain.)  Suppose  the  pleasure  as  ex- 
quisite as.  any  in  life,  and  the  pain  as  exquisite  as  any ;  for  ex- 
ample, stone-gravel,  gout,,  headache,  earache,  toothache,  cholic, 
&c.     I  would  not.     I  would  rather  be  blotted  out. 

2f  Would  ■  you  accept  a  life  of  one  year  of  incessant  gout, 
headache,  &c.,  for  seventy-two  years  of  such  life  as  you  have 
enjoyed?     I  would  not.     (One  year  of  cholic  =  seventy-two  of 


CORRESPONDEITCE.  31 

Boule  de  Savon  ;  pretty,  but  unsubstantial.)  I  had  rather  be  ex- 
tinguished. You  may  vary  these  Algebraical  equations  at  pleas- 
ure and  without  end.  All, this  ratiocination,  calculation,  call  it 
what  you  will,  is  founded  on  the  supposition  of  no  future  state. 
Promise  me  eternal  life  free  from  pain,  although  in  all  other  re- 
spects no  better  than  our  present  terrestrial  existence,  I  know  not 
how  many  thousand  years  of  Smithfield  fevers  I  would  not  en- 
dure to  obtain  it.  In  fine,  without  the  supposition  of  a  future 
state,  mankind  and  this  globe  appear  to  me  the  most  sublime  and 
beautiful  bubble,  and  bauble,  that  imagination  can  conceive. 

Let  us  then  wish  for  immortality  at  all  hazards,  and  trust  the 
Ruler  with  his  skies.  I  do ;  and  earnestly  wish  for  his  com- 
mands, which  to  the  utmost  of  my  power  shall  be  implicitly  and 
piously  obeyed. 

It  is  worth  while  to  live  to  read  Grimm,  whom  I  have  read ; 
and*-La  Harpe  and  Mademoiselle  D'Espinasse  the  fair  friend  of 
D'Alembert,  both  of  whom  Grimm  characterizes  very  distinguish- 
ed, and  are,  I  am  told,  in  print.  I  have  not  seen  them,  but  hope 
soon  to  have  them. 

My  history  of  the  Jesuits  is  not  elegantly  written,  but  is  sup- 
ported by  unquestionable  authorities,  is  very  particular  and  very 
horrible.     Their  restoration  is  indeed  a  "  step  towards  darkness," 

cruelty,  perfidy,  despotism,  death  and !     I  wish  we  were 

out  of  "  danger  of  bigotry  and  Jesuitism"  !  May  we  be  "  a  bar- 
rier against  the  returns  of  ignorance  and  barbarism"!  "  What  a 
colossus  shall  we  be"  !  But  will  it  not  be  of  brass,  iron  and 
clay?  Your  taste  is  judicious  in  liking  better  the  dreams  of  the 
future,  than  the  history  of  the  past.  Upon  this  principle  I  proph- 
ecy that  you  and  I  shall  soon  meet,  and  be  better  friends  thau 
ever.     So  wishes,  J-  A. 


TO    MB.    ISAAC    H.    TEFFANY. 

MoNTicELLO,   A'ligiist  26,  1816. 

SiK, — In  answer  to  your  inquiry  as  to  the  merits  of  Gillies' 
translation  of  the  Politics  of  Aristotle,  I  can  only  say  that  it  has 


32  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

the  reputation  of  being  preferable  to  Ellis',  the  only  rival  trans- 
lation into  English.  I  have  never  seen  it  myself,  and  therefore 
do  not  speak  of  it  from  my  own  knowledge.  Bat  so  different 
was  the  style  of  society  then,  and  with  those  people,  from  what 
it  is  now  and  with  lis,  that  I  think  little  edification  can  be  ob- 
tained from  their  writings  on  the  subject  of  government.  They 
had  just  ideas  of  the  value  of  personal  liberty,  but  none  at  all  of 
the  structure  of  government  best  calculated  to  preserve  it.  They 
knew  no  medium  between  a  democracy  (the  only  pure  republic, 
but  impracticable  beyond  the  hmits  of  a  town)  and  an  abandon- 
ment of  themselves  t®  an  aristocracy,  or  a  tyranny  independent  of 
the  people.  It  seems  not  to  have  occurred  that  where  the  citizens 
cannot  meet  to  transact  their  business  in  person,  they  alone  have 
the  right  to  choose  the  agents  who  shall  transact  it ;  and  that  in 
this  way  a  republican,  or  popular  government,  of  the  second  grade 
of  purity,  may  be  exercised  over  any  extent  of  country.  The 
full  experiment  of  a  government  democratical,  but  representative, 
was  and  is  still  reserved  for  us.  The  idea  (taken,  indeed,  from 
the  little  specimen  formerly  existing  in  the  English  constitution, 
but  now  lost)  has  been  carried  by  us,  more  or  less,  inlo  all  our 
legislative  and  executive  departments  ;  but  it  has  not  yet,  by  any 
of  us,  been  pushed  into  all  the  ramifications  of  the  system,  so 
far  as  to  leave  no  authority  existing  not  responsible  to  the  people  ; 
whose  rights,  however,  to  the  exercise  and  fruits  of  their  own 
industry,  can  never  be  protected  against  the  selfishness  of  rulers 
not  subject  to  their  control  at  short  periods.  The  mtroduction 
of  this  new  principle  of  representative  democracy  has  rendered 
useless  almost  everything  written  before  on  the  structure  of  gov- 
ernment ;  and,  in  a  great  measure,  relieves  our  regret,  if  the  politi- 
cal writings  of  Aristotle,  or  of  any  other  ancient,  have  been  lost, 
or  are  unfaithfully  rendered  or  explained  to  us.  My  most  ear- 
nest wish  is  to  see  the  republican  element  of  popular  control 
pushed  to  the  maximum  of  its  practicable  exercise.  I  shall  then 
believe  that  our  government  may  be  pure  and  perpetual.  Ac- 
cept my  respectful  salutations 


OOEEESPOKDENCE.  33 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFEBSON. 

QuiNCT,  September  3,  1816. 

Dear  Sib, — Dr.  James  Freeman  is  a  learned,  ingenious,  hon- 
est and  benevolent  man,  who  wishes  to  see  President  Jefferson, 
and  requests  me  to  introduce  him.  If  you  would  introduce  some 
of  your  friends  to  me.  I  could,  with  more  confidence,  introduce 
mine  to  you.  He  is  a  Christian,  but  not  a  Pythagorian,  a  Pla- 
tonic, or  a  Philonic  Christian.  You  will  ken  him,  and  he  will 
ken  you ;  but  you  may  depend  he  will  never  betray,  deceive,  or 
injure  you. 

Without  hinting  to  him  anything  which  had  passed  between 
you  and  nre,  I  asked  him  your  question,  "What  are  the  uses  of 
grief?"  He  stared,  and  said  "  The  question  was  new  to  him." 
All  he  could  say  at  present  was,  that  he  had  known,  in  his  own 
parish,  more  than  one  instance  of  ladies  who  had  been  thoughtless, 
modish,  extravagant  in  a  high  degree,  who,  upon  the  death  of 
a  child,  had  become  thoughtful,  modest,  humble;  as  prudent, 
amiable  women  as  any  he  had  known.  Upon  this  I  read  to  him 
your  letters  and  mine  upon  this  subject  of  grief,  with  which  he 
seemed  to  be  pleased.  You  see  I  was  not  afraid  to  trust  him, 
and  you  need  not  be. 

Since  I  am,  accidentally,  invited  to  write  to  you,  I  may  add  a 
few  words  upon  pleasures  and  pains  of  life.  Vassall  thought,  an 
hundred  years,  nay,  an  eternity  of  pleasure,  was  no  compensa- 
tion for  one  hour  of  bihous  cholic.  Read  again  Molliores  Spsyke, 
act  2d,  scene  1st,  on  the  subject  of  grief.  And  read  in  another 
place,  "  on  est  paye  de  mille  maux,  par  un  heureux  moment." 
Thus  differently  do  men  speak  of  pleasures  and  pains.  Now, 
Sir,  I  will  tease  you  with  another  question.  What  have  been 
the  abuses  of  grief  ? 

In  answer  to  this  question,  I  doubt  not  you  might  write  an 
hundred  volumes.  A  few  hints  may  convince  you  that  the  sub- 
ject is  ample. 

1st.  The  death  of  Socrates  excited  a  general  sensibility  of 
grief  at  Athens,  in  Attica,  and  in  all  Greece.     Plato  and  Xeho- 

VOL.  VII.  3 


34  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

phon,  two  of  his  disciples,  took  advantage  of  that  sentiment,  by 
emj)ioying  their  encViauting  style  to  represent  their  master  to  be 
greater  and  better  than  he  probably  was ;  and  what  have  been 
the  effects  of  Socratic,  Platonic,  which  were  Pythagorian,  which 
was  Indian  philosophy,  in  the  world  ? 

2d.  The  death  of  Caesar,  tyrant  as  he  was,  spread  a  general 
compassion,  which  always  includes  grief,  among  the  Romans. 
The  scoundrel  Mark  Antony  availed  himself  of  this  momentary 
grief  to  destroy  the  republic,  to  establish  the  empire,  and  to  pro- 
scribe Cicero. 

3d.  But  to  skip  over  all  ages  and  nations  for  the  present,  and 
descend  to  our  own  times.  The  death  of  Washington  diffused  a 
general  grief.  The  old  tories,  the  hyperfederalists,  the  specula- 
tors, set  up  a  general  howl.  Orations,  prayers,  sermons,  mock 
funerals,  were  all  employed,  not  that  they  loved  Washington, 
but  to  keep  in  countenance  the  funding  and  banking  system  ;  and 
to  cast  into  the  background  and  the  shade,  all  others  who  had 
been  concerned  in  the  service  of  their  country  in  the  Revolution. 

4th.  The  death  of  Hamilton,  under  all  its  circumstances,  pro- 
duced a  general  grief  His  most  determined  enemies  did  not 
like  to  get  rid  of  him  in  that  way.  They  pitied,  too,  his  widow 
and  children.  His  party  seized  the  moment  of  public  feeling  to 
come  forward  with  funeral  orations,  and  printed  panegyrics,  re- 
inforced with  mock  funerals  and  solemn  grimaces,  and  all  this 
by  people  who  have  buried  Otis,  Sam  Adams,  Hancock,  and 
Gerry,  in  comparative  obscurity.  And  why  ?  Merely  to  disgrace 
the  old  Whigs,  and  keep  the  funds  and  banks  in  countenance. 

5th.  The  death  of  Mr.  Ames  excited  a  general  regret.  His 
long  consumption,  his  amiable  character,  and  reputable  talents, 
had  attracted  a  general  interest,  and  his  death  a  general 
mourning.  His  party  made  the  most  of  it,  by  processions, 
orations,  and  a  mock  funeral.  And  why  ?  To  glorify  the 
Tories,  to  abash  the  Whigs,  and  maintain  the  reputation  of 
fimds,  banks,  and  speculation.  And  all  this  was  done  in  honor 
of  that  insignificant  boy,  by  people  who  have  let  a  Dance  a 
Gerry,  and  a  Dexter,  go  to  their  graves  without  notice. 


COERESPONDENCE.  35 

6th.  I  almost  shxidder  at  the  thought  of  alluding  to  the  most 
fatal  example  of  the  abuses  of  grief  which  the  history  of  man- 
kind has  preserved — The  Cross.  Consider  what  calamities  that 
engine  of  grief  has  produced  !  With  the  rational  respect  which 
is  due  to  it,  knavish  priests  have  added  prostitutions  of  it,  that 
fill,  or  might  fill,  the  blackest  and  bloodiest  pages  of  human 
history. 

I  am  with  ancient  friendly  sentiments, 


TO    SAMUEL    KERCHIVAL. 

MoNTicELLO,  September  5,  1816. 

Sir, — ^Your  letter  of  August  the  16th  is  just  received.  That 
which  I  wrote  to  you  under  the  address  of  H.  Tompkinson,  was 
intended  for  the  author  of  the  pamphlet  you  were  so  kind  as  to 
send  me,  and  therefore,  in  your  hands,  found  its  true  destination. 
But  I  must  beseech  you.  Sir,  not  to  admit  a  possibility  of  its 
being  published.  Many  good  people  will  revolt  from  its  doc- 
trines, and  my  wish  is  to  offend  nobody ;  to  leave  to  those  who 
are  to  live  under  it,  the  settlement'of  their  own  constitution,  and 
to  pass  in  peace  the  remainder  of  my  time.  If  those  opinions 
are  sound,  they  will  occur  to  others,  and  will  prevail  by  their 
own  weight,  without  the  aid  of  names,  I  am  glad  to  see  that 
the  Staunton  meeting  has  rejected  the  idea  of  a  limited  conven- 
tion. The  article,  however,  nearest  my  heart,  is  the  division  of 
counties  into  wards.  These  will  be  pure  and  elementary  repub- 
lics, the  sum  of  all  which,  taken  together,  composes  the  State, 
and  will  make  of  the  whole  a  true  democracy  as  to  the  business 
of  the  wards,  which  is  that  of  nearest  and  daily  concern.  The 
aifairs  of  the  larger  sections,  of  counties,  of  States,  and  of  the 
Union,  not  admitting  personal  transaction  by  the  people,  will  be 
delegated  to  agents  elected  by  themselves ;  and  representation 
will  thus  be  substituted,  where  personal  action  becomes  imprac- 
ticable. Yet,  even  over  these  representative  organs,  should  they 
become  corrupt  and  perverted,  the  division  into  wards  constitut- 


S6  JEFFERSON'S   "WORKS. 

ing  the  people,  in  their  wards,  a  regularly  organized  power,  en- 
ables  them  by  that  organization  to  crush,  regularly  and  peace- 
ably, the  usurpations  of  their  unfaithful  agents,  and  rescues  them 
from  the  dreadful  necessity  of  doing  it  insurrectionally.  In  this 
way  we  shall  be  as  republican  as  a  large  society  can  be ;  and 
secure  the  continuance  of  purity  in  our  government,  by  the  salu- 
tary, peaceable,  and  regular  control  of  the  people.  No  other 
depositories  of  power  have  ever  yet  been  found,  which  did  not 
end  in  converting  to  their  own  profit  the  earnings  of  those  com- 
mitted to  their  charge.  George  the  III.  in  execution  of  the  trust 
confided  to  him,  has,  within  his  own  day,  loaded  the  inhabitants 
of  Great  Britain  with  debts  equal  to  the  whole  fee-simple  value 
of  their  island,  and  imder  pretext  of  governing  it,  has  alienated 
its  whole  soil  to  creditors  who  could  lend  money  to  be  lavished 
on  priests,  pensions,  plunder  and  perpetual  war.  This  would  not 
have  been  so,  had  the  people  retained  organized  means  of  acting 
on  their  agents.  In  this  example  then,  let  us  read  a  lesson  for 
ourselves,  and  not  "  go  and  do  likewise." 

Since  writing  my  letter  of  July  the  12th,  I  have  been  told, 
that  on  the  question  of  equal  representation,  our  fellow  citizens  in 
some  sections  of  the  State  claim  peremptorily  a  right  of  repre- 
sentation for  their  slaves.  Principle  will,  in  this,  as  in  most  other 
cases,  open  the  way  for  us  to  correct  conclusion.  Were  our  State 
a  pure  democracy,  in  which  all  its  inhabitants  should  meet  together 
to  transact  all  their  business,  there  would  yet  be  excluded  from 
their  deliberations,  1,  infants,  until  arrived  at  years  of  discretion. 
2.  Women,  who,  to  prevent  depravation  of  morals  and  ambiguity 
of  issue,  could  not  mix  promiscuously  in  th§  public;  meetings  of 
men.  3.  Slaves,  from  whom  the  unfortunate  state  of  things  with 
us  takes  away  the  rights  of  will  and  of  property.  Those  then 
who  have  no  will  could  be  permitted  to  exercise  none  in  the  pop- 
ular assembly ;  and  of  course,  could  delegate  none  to  an  agent 
in  a  representative  assembly.  The  business,  in  the  first  case, 
would  be  done  by  qualified  citizens  only.  It  is  true,  that  in 
the  general  constitution,  our  State  is  allowed  a  larger  representa- 
tion on  account  of  its  slaves.     But  every  one  knows,  that  that 


OOREESPONDENOE.  37 

constitution  was  a  matter  of  compromise  ;  a  capitulation  between 
conflicting  interests  and  opinions.  In  truth,  the  condition  of  dif- 
ferent descriptions  of  inhabitants  in  any  coimtry  is  a  matter  of 
municipal  arrangement,  of  which  no  foreign  country  has  a  right 
to  take  notice.  All  its  inhabitants  are  men  as  to  them.  Thus,  in 
the  New  England  States,  none  have  the  powers  of  citizens  but 
those  whom  they  cbW.  freemen  ;  and  none  axe  freemen  until  ad- 
mitted by  a  vote  of  the  freemen  of  the  town.  Yet,  in  the  Gen- 
eral Government,  these  non-freemen  are  counted  in  their  quantum 
of  representation  and  of  taxation.  So,  slaves  with  us  have  no 
powers  as  citizens  ;  yet,  in  representation  in  the  General  Govern- 
ment, they  count  in  the  proportion  of  three  to  five ;  and  so  also 
in  taxation.  Whether  this  is  equal,  is  not  here  the  question.  It 
is  a  capitulation  of  discordant  sentiments  and  circumstances,  and 
is  obligatory  on  that  ground.  But  this  view  shows  there  is  no 
inconsistency  in  claiming  representation  for  them  for  the  other 
States,  and  refusing  it  within  our  own.  Accept  the  renewal  of 
assurances  of  my  respect. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTiOELLO,  October  14, 1816. 

Your  letter,  dear  Sir,  of  May  the  6th,  had  already  well  ex- 
plained the  uses  of  grief.  That  of  September  the  3d,  with  equal 
truth,  adduces  instances  of  its  abuse  ;  and  when  we  put  into  the 
same  scale  these  abuses,  with  the  afflictions  of  soul  which  even 
the  uses  of  grief  cost  us,  we  may  conside;r  its  value  in  the  eco- 
nomy of  the  human  being,  as  equivocal  at  least.  Those  afflictions 
cloud  too  great  a  portion  of  life  to  find  a  counterpoise  in  any 
benefits  derived  from  its  uses.  For  setting  aside  its  paroxysms 
on  the  occasions  of  special  bereavements,  all  the  latter  years  of 
aged  men  are  overshadowed  with  its  gloom.  Whither,  for  in- 
stance, can  you  and  I  look  without  seeing  the  graves  of  those 
we  have  known  ?  And  whom  can  we  call  up,  of  our  early  com 
pamons,  who  has  not  left  us  to  regret  his  loss  ?     This,  indeed 


38  JEFFERSON'S   "WORKS. 

may  be  one  of  the  salutary  effects  of  grief;  inasmuch  as  it  pre- 
pares us  to  loose  ourselves  also  without  repugnance.  Doctor 
Freeman's  instances  of  female  levity  cured  by  grief,  are  certainly 
to  the  point,  and  constitute  an  item  of  credit  in  the  account  we 
examine.  I  was  much  mortified  by  the  loss  of  the  Doctor's  visit, 
by  my  absence  from  home.  To  have  shown  how  much  I  feel 
indebted  to  you  for  making  good  people  known  to  me,  would 
have  been  one  pleasure  ;  and  to  have  enjoyed  that  of  his  conver- 
sation, and  the  benefits  of  his  information,  so  favorably  reported 
by  my  family,  would  have  been  another.  I  returned  home  on 
the  third  day  after  his  departure.  The  loss  of  such  visits  is  among 
the  sacrifices  which  my  divided  residence  costs  me. 

Your  undertaking  the  twelve  volumes  of  Dupuis,  is  a  degree  of 
heroism  to  which  I  could  not  have  aspired  even  in  my  younger 
days.  I  have  been  contented  with  the  humble  achievement  of 
reading  the  analysis  of  his  work  by  Destutt  Tracy,  in  two  hun- 
dred pages  octavo.  I  believe  I  should  have  ventured  on  his  own 
abridgment  of  the  work,  in  one  octavo  volume,  had  it  ever  come 
to  my  hands  ;  but  the  marrow  of  it  in  Tracy  has  satisfied  my  ap- 
petite ;  and  even  in  that,  the  preliminary  discourse  of  the  analyzer 
himself,  and  his  conclusion,  are  worth  more  in  my  eye  than  the 
body  of  the  work.  For  the  object  of  that  seems  to  be  to  smother 
all  history  under  the  mantle  of  allegory.  If  histories  so  unlike  as 
those  of  Hercules  and  Jesus,  can,  by  a  fertile  imagination  and  al- 
legorical interpretations,  be  brought  to  the  same  tally,  no  line  of 
distinction  remains  between  fact  and  fancy.  As  this  pithy  morsel 
will  not  overburthen  the  mail  in  passing  and  repassing  between 
Quincy  and  Monticello,  I  send  it  for  your  perusal.  Perhaps  it 
will  satisfy  you,  as  it  has  me ;  and  may  save  you  the  labor  of 
reading  twenty-four  times  its  volume.  I  have  said  to  you  that  it 
was  written  by  Tracy ;  and  I  had  so  entered  it  on  the  title  page, 
as  I  usually  do  on  anonymous  works  whose  authors  are  known  to 
me.  But  Tracy  requested  me  not  to  betray  his  anonyme,  for 
reasons  which  may  not  yet,  perhaps,  have  ceased  to  weigh.  I  am 
bound,  then,  to  make  the  same  reserve  with  you.  Destutt  Tracy 
is,  in  my  judgment,  the  ablest  writer  living  on  intellectual  sub- 


OOREESPONDENOE.  39 

jects,  or  the  operations  of  the  understanding.  His  three  octavo 
vohimes  on  Ideology,  which  constitute  the  foundation  of  what 
he  has  since  written,  I  have  not  entirely  read  ;  because  I  am  not 
fond  of  reading  what  is  merely  abstract,  and  unapplied  im- 
mediately to  some  useful  science.  Bonaparte,  with  his  repeated 
derisions  of  Ideologists  (squinting  at  this  author),  has  by  this  time 
felt  that  true  wisdom  does  not  lie  in  mere  practice  without  prin- 
ciple. The  next  work  Tracy  wrote  was  the  Comnaentary  on 
Montesquieu,  never  published  in  the  original,  because  not  safe ; 
but  translated  and  published  in  Philadelphia,  yet  without  the 
author's  name.  He  has  since  permitted  his  name  to  be  men- 
tioned. Although  called  a  Commentary,  it  is,  in  truth,  an  ele- 
mentary work  on  the  principles  of  government,  comprised  in 
about  three  hundred  pages  octavo.  He  has  lately  published  a 
third  work,  on  Political  Economy,  comprising  the  whole  subject 
within  about  the  same  compass ;  in  which  all  its  principles  are 
demonstrated  with  the  severity  of  Euclid,  and,  like  him,  without 
ever  using  a  superfluous  word.  I  have  procured  this  to  be  trans- 
lated, and  have  been  four  years  endeavoring  to  get  it  printed ; 
but  as  yet,  without  success.  In  the  meantime,  the  author  has 
published  the  original  in  France,  which  he  thought  unsafe  while 
Bonaparte  was  in  power.  No  printed  copy,  I  believe,  has  yet 
reached  this  country.  He  has  his  fourth  and  last  work  now  in 
the  press  at  Paris,  closing,  as  he  conceives,  the  circle  of  meta- 
physical sciences.  This  work,  which  is  on  Ethics,  I  have  not 
seen,  but  suspect  I  shall  differ  from  it  in  its  foundation,  although 
not  in  its  deductions.  I  gather  from  his  other  works  that  he 
adopts  the  principle  of  Hobbes,  that  justice  is  founded  in  contract 
solely,  and  does  not  result  from  the  construction  of  man.  I  be- 
lieve, on  the  contrary,  that  it  is  instinct  and  innate,  that  the  moral 
sense  is  as  much  a  part  of  our  constitution  as  that  of  feeling,  see- 
ing, or  hearing  ;  as  a  wise  creator  must  have  seen  to  be  necessary 
in  an  animal  destined  to  live  in  society ;  that  every  human  mind 
feels  pleasure  in  doing  good  to  another ;  that  the  non-existence 
of  justice  is  not  to  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  the  same  act  is 
deemed  virtuous  and  right  in  one  society  which  is  held  vicious 


40  JEPFEKSON'S    WOKKS. 

and  wrong  in  another ;  because,  as  the  circumstances  and  opin 
ions  of  different  societies  vary,  so  the  acts  which  may  do  their, 
right  or  wrong  must  vary  also  ;  for  virtue  does  not  consist  in  the 
act  we  do,  but  in  the  end  it  is  to  effect.  If  it  is  to  effect  the  hap- 
piness of  liim  to  whom  it  is  directed,  it  is  virtuous,  while  in  a  so- 
ciety under  different  circumstances  and  opinions,  the  same  act 
might  produce  pain,  and  would  be  vicious.  The  essence  of  virtue 
is  in  doing  good  to  others,  while  what  is  good  may  be  one  thing 
in  one  society,  and  its  contrary  in  another.  Yet,  however  we 
may  differ  as  to  the  foundation  of  morals,  (and  as  many  founda- 
tions have  been  assumed  as  there  are  writers  on  the  subject  nearly,) 
so  correct  a  thinker  as  Tracy  will  give  us  a  sound  system  of  mo- 
rals. And,  indeed,  it  is  remarkable,  that  so  many  writers,  setting 
out  from  so  many  different  premises,  yet  meet  all  in  the  same 
conclusions.  This  looks  as  if  they  were  guided,  unconsciously, 
by  the  unerring  hand  of  instinct. 

Your  history  of  the  Jesuits,  by  what  name  of  the  author  or 
other  description  is  it  to  be  inquired  for  ? 

What  do  you  think  of  the  present  situation  of  England  ?  Is 
not  this  the  great  and  fatal  crush  of  their  funding  system,  which 
like  death,  has  been  foreseen  by  all,  but  its  hour,  like  that  of 
death,  hidden  from  mortal  prescience  ?  It  appears  to  me  that  all 
the  circumstances  now  exist  which  render  recovery  desperate. 
The  interest  of  the  national  debt  is  now  equal  to  such  a  portion 
of  the  profits  of  all  the  land  and  the  labor  of  the  island,  as  not 
to  leave  enough  for  the  subsistence  of  those  who  labor.  Hence 
the  owners  of  the  land  abandon  it  and  retire  to  other  countries, 
and  the  laborer  has  not  enough  of  his  earnings  left  to  him  to 
cover  his  back  and  to  fill  his  belly.  The  local  insurrections,  now 
almost  general,  are  of  the  hungry  and  the  naked,  who  cannot  be 
quieted  but  by  food  and  raiment.  But  where  are  the  means  of 
feeding  and  clothing  them  ?  The  landholder  has  nothing  of  his 
own  to  give  ;  he  is  but  the  fiduciary  of  those  who  have  lent  him 
money  ;  the  lender  is  so  taxed  in  his  meat,  drink  and  clothing, 
that  he  has  but  a  bare  subsistence  left.  The  landholder,  then, 
must  give  up  his  land,  or  the  lender  his  debt,  or  they  must  com- 


CORRESPONDENOE.  41 

promise  by  giving  up  each  one-half.  But  will  either  consent, 
■peaceably,  to  such  an  abandonment  of  property  ?  Or  must  it  not 
be  settled  by  civil  conflict?  If  peaceably  compromised,  will 
they  agree  to  risk  another  ruin  under  the  same  government  un- 
reformed  ?  I  think  not ;  but  I  would  rather  know  what  you 
think  ;  because  you  have  lived  with  John  Bull,  and  know  better 
than  I  do  the  character  of  his  herd.  1  salute  Mrs.  Adams  and 
yourself  with  every  sentiment  of  aff"ectionate  cordiality  and  re- 
spect. 


TO    THE    SECRETAKT    OF    STATE. 

/  MuNTiCELio,  October  16,  1816. 

Dear  Sik, — If  it  be  proposed  to  place  an  inscription  on  the 
capitol,  the  lapidary  style  requires  that  essential  facts  only  should 
be  stated,  and  these  with  a  brevity  admitting  no  superfluous  word. 
The  essential  facts  in  the  two  inscriptions  proposed  are  these  : 

FOUNDED  lYSl. BURNT  BY  A  BRITISH  ARMY  1814. — ^tlESTORED  BY  CONQKESS  1817. 

The  reasons  for  this  brevity  are  that  the  letters  must  be  of  extra- 
ordinary magnitude  to  be  read  from  below  ;  that  little  space  is 
allowed  them,  being  usually  put  into  a  pediment  or  in  a  frize,  or 
on  a  small  tablet  on  the  wall ;  and  in  our  case,  a  third  reason 
may  be  added,  that  no  passion  can  be  imputed  to  this  inscription, 
every  word  being  justifiable  from  the  most  classical  examples. 

But  a  question  of  more  importance  is  whether  there  should  be 
one  at  all  ?  The  barbarism  of  the  conflagration  will  immortalize 
that  of  the  nation.  It  will  place  them  forever  in  degraded  com- 
parison with  the  execrated  Bonaparte,  who,  in  possession  of 
almost  every  capitol  in  Europe,  injured  no  one.  Of  this,  history 
will  take  care,  which  all  will  read,  while  our  inscription  will  be 
seen  by  few.  Great  Britain,  in  her  pride  and  ascendency,  has 
certainly  hated  and  despised  us  beyond  every  earthly  object. 
Her  hatred  may  remain,  but  the  hour  of  her  contempt  is  passed 
and  is  succeeded  by  dread  ;  not  a  present,  but  a  distant  and  deep 


42  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

one.  It  is  the  greater  as  she  feels  herself  plunged  into  an  abyss 
of  ruin  from  which  no  human  means  point  out  an  issue.  We 
also  have  more  reason  to  hate  her  than  any  nation  on  earth.  Bui 
she  is  not  now  an  object  for  hatred.  She  is  falling  from  her 
transcendant  sphere,  which  all  men  ought  to  have  -rt^ished,  but  not 
that  she  should  lose  all  place  among  nations.  It  is  for  the  interest 
of  all  that  she  should  be  maintained,  nearly  on  a  par  with  other 
members  of  the  republic  of  nations.  Her  power,  absorbed  into 
that  of  any  other,  would  be  an  object  of  dread  to  all,  and  to  us 
more  than  all,  because  we  are  accessible  to  her  alone  and  through 
.her  alone.  The  armies  of  Bonaparte  with  the  fleets  of  Britain, 
would  change  the  aspect  of  our  destinies.  Under  these  prospects 
should  we  perpetuate  hatred  against  her  ?  Should  we  not,  on 
the  contrary,  begin  to  open  ourselves  to  other  and  more  rational 
dispositions  ?  It  is  not  improbable  that  the  circumstances  of  the 
war  and  her  own  circumstances  may  have  brought  her  wise  men 
to  begin  to  view  us  with  other  and  even  with  kindred  eyes. 
Should  not  our  wise  men,  then,  lifted  above  the  passions  of  the 
ordinary  citizen,  begin  to  contemplate  what  will  he  the  interests  of 
our  country  on  so  important  a  change  among  the  elements  which 
influence  it  ?  I  think  it  would  be  better  to  give  her  time  to  show 
her  present  temper,  and  to  prepare  the  minds  of  our  citizens  for 
a  corresponding  change  of  disposition,  by  acts  of  comity  towards 
England  rather  than  by  commemoration  of  hatred.  These 
views  might  be  greatly  extended.  Perhaps,  however,  they  are 
premature,  and  that  I  may  see  the  ruin  of  England  nearer  than 
it  really  is.  This  will  be  matter  of  consideration  with  those  to 
whose  councils  we  have  commited  ourselves,  and  whose  wisdom 
J  am  sure,  will  conclude  on  what  is  best.  Perhaps  they  may  let 
It  go  off  on  the  single  and  short  consideration  that  the  thing  can 
do  no  good,  and  may  do  harm.     Ever  and  affectionately  yours. 


OOERESPONDENOE.  43 


TO   JOHN   ADAMS. 

Poplar  Foekst,  November  25,  1816. 

I  receive  here,  dear  Sir,  your  favor  of  the  4th,  just  as  I  am 
preparing  my  return  to  Monticello  for  winter  quarters,  and  I  hasten 
to  answer  to  some  of  your  inquiries.  The  Tracy  I  mentioned 
to  you  is  the  one  connected  by  marriage  with  Lafayette's  family. 
The  mail  which  brought  your  letter,  brought  one  also  from  him. 
He  writes  me  that  he  is  become  blind,  and  so  infirm  that  he  is 
no  longer  able  to  compose  anything.  So  that  we  are  to  consider 
his  works  as  now  closed.  They  are  three  volumes  of  Ideology, 
one  on  Political  Economy,  one  on  Ethics,  and  one  containing 
his  Commentary  on  Montesquieu,  and  a  little  tract  on  Education. 
Although  his  commentary  explains  his  principles  of  government, 
he  had  intended  to  have  substituted  for  it  an  elementary  and  reg- 
ular treatise  on  the  subject,  but  he  is  prevented  by  his  infirmities. 
His  Analyse  de  Dupuys  he  does  not  avow. 

My  books  are  all  arrived,  some  at  New  York,  some  at  Boston, 
and  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  those  for  Harvard  are  safe  also,  and 
the  Uranologia  you  mention  without  telling  me  what  it  is.  It  is 
something  good,  I  am  sure,  from  the  name  connected  with  it ; 
and  if  you  would  add  to  it  your  fable  of  the  bees,  we  should  re- 
ceive valuable  instruction  as  to  the  Uranologia  both  of  the  father 
and  son,  more  valuable  than  the  Chinese  will  from  our  bible  so- 
cieties. These  incendiaries,  finding  that  the  days  of  fire  and 
fagot  are  over  in  the  Atlantic  hemisphere,  are  now  preparing  to 
put  the  torch  to  the  Asiatic  regions.  What  would  they  say  were 
the  Pope  to  send  annually  to  this  country,  colonies  of  Jesuit 
priests  with  cargoes  of  their  missal  and  translations  of  their  Vul- 
gate, to  be  put  gratis  into  the  hands  of  every  one  who  would  ac- 
cept them  ?  and  to  act  thus  nationally  on  us  as  a  nation  ? 

I  proceed  to  the  letter  you  were  so  good  as  to  enclose  me.  It 
is  an  able  letter,  speaks  volumes  in  few  words,  presents  a  pro- 
found view  of  awful  truths,  and  lets  us  see  truths  more  awful, 
which  are  still  to  follow.  George  the  Third  then,  and  his 
minister  Pitt,  and  successors,  have  spent  the  fee  simple  of  the 


44  JEFFERSON'S    "WOEKS. 

kingdom,  under  pretence  of  governing  it ;  their ' sinecures,  sala- 
ries, pensions,  priests,  prelates,  princes  and  eternal  wars,  have 
mortgaged  to  its  full  value  the  last  foot  of  their  soil.  They  are 
reduced  to  the  dilemma  of  a  bankrupt  spendthrift,  who,  having 
run  through  his  whole  fortune,  now  asks  himself  what  he  is  to 
do  ?  It  is  in  vain  he  dismisses  his  coaches  and  horses,  his 
grooms,  liveries,  cooks  and  butlers.  This  done,  he  still  finds  he 
has  nothing  to  eat.  What  was  his  property  is  now  that  of  his 
creditors ;  if  still  in  his  hands,  it  is  only  as  their  trustee.  To 
them  it  belongs,  and  to  them  every  farthing  of  its  profits  must  go. 
The  reformation  of  extravagances  comes  too  late.  All  is  gone. 
Nothing  left  for  retrenchment  or  frugality  to  go  on.  The  debts 
of  England,  however,  being  due  from  the  whole  nation  to  one 
half  of  it,  being  as  much  the  debt  of  the  creditor  as  debtor,  if  it 
could  be  referred  to  a  court  of  equity,  principles  might  be  devised 
to  adjust  it  peaceably.  Dismiss  their  parasites,  ship  off  their  pau- 
pers to  this  country,  let  the  landholders  give  half  their  lands  to 
the  money  lenders,  and  these  last  relinquish  one  half  of  their 
debts.  They  would  still  have  a  fertile  island,  a  sound  and.  ef- 
fective population  to  labor  it,  and  would  hold  that  station  among 
political  powers,  to  which  their  natural  resources  and  faculties 
entitle  them.  They  would  no  longer,  indeed,  be  the  lords  of  the 
ocean  and  paymasters  of  all  the  princes  of  the  earth.  They 
would  no  longer  enjoy  the  luxuries  of  pirating  and  plundering 
everything  by  sea,  and  of  bribing  and  corrupting  everything  by 
land  ;  but  they  might  enjoy  the  more  safe  and  lasting  luxury  of 
living  on  terms  of  equality,  justice  and  good  neighborhood  with 
all  nations.  As  it  is,  their  first  efforts  will  probably  be  to  quiet 
things  a'while  by  the  palliatives  of  reformation  ;  to  nibble  a  little 
at  pensions  and  sinecures,  to  bite  off  a  bit  here,  and  a  bite  there 
to  amuse  the  people  ;  and  to  keep  the  government  a  going  by 
encroachments  on  the  interest  of  the  public  debt,  one  per  cent, 
of  which,  for  instance,  withheld,  gives  them  a  spare  revenue  of  ten 
millions  for  present  subsistence,  and  spunges,  in  fact,  two  hundred 
millions  of  the  debt.  This  remedy  they  may  endeavor  to  ad- 
minister in  broken  doses  of  a  small  pill  at  a  time.     The  first 


OORRESPONDENOE.  45 

may  not  occasion  more  than  a  strong  nausea  in  the  money  lend- 
ers ;  but  the  second  will  probably  produce  a  revulsion  of  the 
stomach,  borborisms,  and  spasmodic  calls  for  fair  settlement  and 
compromise.  But  it  is  not  in  the  character  of  man  to  come 
to  any  peaceable  compromise  of  such  a  state  of  things.  The 
princes  and  priests  will  hold  to  the  flesh-pots,  the  empty  bellies  will 
seize  on  them,  and  these  being  the  multitude,  the  issue  is  ob- 
vious, civil  war,  massacre,  exile  as  in  Prance,  until  the  stage  is 
cleaned  of  everything  but  the  multitude,  and  the  lands  get 
into  their  hands  by  such  processes  as  the  revolution  will  en- 
gender. They  will  then  want  peace  and  a  government,  and 
what  will  it  be  ?  certainly  not  a  renewal  of  that  which  has  al- 
ready ruined  them.  Their  habits  of  law  and  order,  their  ideas 
almost  innate  of  the  vital  elements  of  free  government,  of  trial 
by  jury,  habeas  corpus,  freedom  of  the  press,  freedom  of  opin- 
ion, and  representative  government,  make  them,  I  think,  capa- 
ble of  bearing  a  considerable  portion  of  liberty.  They  will 
probably  turn  their  eyes  to  us,  and  be  disposed  to  tread  in  our 
footsteps,  seeing  how  safely  these  have  led  us  into  port.  There 
is  no  part  of  our  model  to  which  they  seem  unequal,  unless  per- 
haps the  elective  presidency ;  and  even  that  might  possibly  be 
rescued  from  the  tumult  of  elections,  by  subdividing  the  electoral 
assemblages  into  very  small  parts,  such  as  of  wards  or  town- 
ships, and  making  them  simultaneous.  But  you  know  them  so 
much  better  than  I  do,  that  it  is  presumption  to  offer  my  conjec- 
tures to  you. 

While  it  is  much  our  interest  to  see  this  power  reduced  from 
its  towering  and  borrowed  height,  to  within  the  limits  of  its 
natural  resources,  it  is  by  no  means  our  interest  that  she  should 
be  brought  below  that,  or  lose  her  competent  place  among  the 
nations  of  Europe.  The  present  exhausted  state  of  the  conti- 
nent will,  I  hope,  permit  them  to  go  through  their  struggle  with- 
out foreign  interference,  and  to  settle  their  new  government  ac- 
cording to  their  own  will.  I  think  it  will  be  friendly  to  us,  as 
the  nation  itself  would  be  were  it  not  artfully  wrought  up  by 
the  hatred  their  government  bears  us.     And  were  they  once  un- 


46  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

der  a  government  which  should  treat  us  with  justice  and  equity. 
I  should  myself  feel  with  great  strength  the  ties  which  bind  us 
together,  of  origin,  language,  laws  and  manners  ;  and  I  am  per- 
suaded the  two  people  would  become  in  future,  as  it  was  with 
the  ancient  Greeks,  among  whom  it  was  reproachful  for  Greek 
to  be  found  fighting  against  Greek  in  a  foreign  army.  The  in 
dividvals  of  the  nation  I  have  ever  honored  and  esteemed,  the 
basis  of  their  character  being  essentially  worthy ;  but  I  consider 
their  government  as  the  most  flagitious  which  has  existed  since 
the  days  of  Philip  of  Macedon,  whom  they  make  their  model. 
It  is  not  only  founded  in  corruption  itself,  but  insinuates  the 
same  poison  into  the  bowels  of  every  other,  corrupts  its  councils, 
nourishes  factions,  stirs  up  revolutions,  and  places  its  own  happi- 
ness in  fomenting  commotions  and  civil  wars  among  others,  thus 
rendering  itself  truly  the  hostis  humani  generis.  The  effect  is 
now  coming  home  to  itself.  Its  first  operation  will  fall  on  the 
individuals  who  have  been  the  chief  instruments  in  its  corrup- 
tions, and  will  eradicate  the  families  which  have  from  generation 
to  generation  been  fattening  on  the  blood  of  their  brethren  ;  and 
this  scoria  once  thrown  off,  I  am  in  hopes  a  purer  nation  will  re- 
sult, and  a  purer  government  be  instituted,  one  which,  instead  of 
endeavoring  to  make  us  their  natural  enemies,  will  see  in  us, 
what  we  really  are,  their  natural  friends  and  brethren,  and  more 
interested  in  a  fraternal  connection  with  them  than  with  any  oth- 
er nation  on  earth.  I  look,  therefore,  to  their  revolution  with 
great  interest.  I  wish  it  to  be  as  moderate  and  bloodless  as  will 
effect  the  desired  object  of  an  honest  government,  one  which 
will  permit  the  world  to  live  in  peace,  and  under  the  bonds  of 
friendship  and  good  neighborhood. 

In  this  tremendous  tempest,  the  distinctions  of  whig  and  tory 
will  disappear  like  chaff  on  a  troubled  ocean.  Indeed,  they  have 
been  disappearing  from  the  day  Hume  first  began  to  publish  his 
history.  This  single  book  has  done  more  to  sap  the  free  princi- 
ples of  the  English  constitution  than  the  largest  standing  army 
of  which  their  patriots  have  been  so  jealous.  It  is  like  the  por- 
traits of  our  countryman  Wright,  whose  eye  was  so  unhappy  as 


COEEESPONDENOE.  47 

to  seize  all  the  ugly  features  of  his  subject,  and  to  present  them 
faithfully,  while  it  "was  entirely  insensible  to  every  lineament  of 
beauty.  So  Hume  has  concentrated,  in  his  fascinating  style,  all 
the  arbitrary  proceedings  of  the  English  kings,  as  true  evidences 
of  the  constitution,  and  glided  over  its  whig  principles  as  the 
unfounded  pretensions  of  factious  demagogues.  He  even  boasts, 
in  his  life  written  by  himself,  that  of  the  numerous  alterations 
suggested  by  the  readers  of  his  work,  he  had  never  adopted  one 
proposed  by  a  whig. 

But  what,  in  this  same  tempest,  will  become  of  their  colonies 
and  their  fleets  ?  Will  the  former  assume  independence,  and  the 
latter  resort  to  piracy  for  subsistence,  taking  possession  of  some 
island  as  a  point  d'appui  ?  A  pursuit  of  these  would  add  too 
much  to  the  speculations  on  the  situation  and  prospects  of  Eng- 
land, into  which  I  have  been  led  by  the  pithy  text  of  the  letter 
you  so  kindly  sent  me,  and  which  I  now  return.  It  is  worthy 
the  pen  of  Tacitus.  I  add,  therefore,  only  my  afiectionate  and 
respectful  souvenirs  to  Mrs.  Adams  and  yourself. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFEKSON. 

Quixoy,  December  16,  1816. 

Your  letter,  dear  Sir,  of  November  25th,  from  Poplar  Forest, 
was  sent  to  me  from  the  post-ofiice  the  next  day  after  I  had  sent 
"  The  Analysis,"  with  my  thanks  to  you. 

"  Three  vols,  of  Idiology  !"  Pray  explain  to  me  this  Neologi- 
cal  title  !  "What  does  it  mean  ?  When  Bonaparte  used  it,  I  was 
delighted  with  it,  upon  the  common  principle  of  delight  in  every- 
thing we  cannot  understand.  Does  it  mean  Idiotism  ?  The 
science  of  non  compos  mentuism  ?  The  science  of  Lunacy  ?  The 
theory  of  delirium  ?  or  does  it  mean  the  science  of  self-love  ?  Of 
amour  propre  ?  or  the  elements  of  vanity  ? 

Were  I  in  France  at  this  time,  I  could  profess  blindness  and 
infirmity,  and  prove  it  too.  I  suppose  he  does  not  avow  the  an- 
alysis, as  Hume  did  not  avow  his  essay  on  human  nature.    That 


48  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

analysis,  however,  does  not  show  a  man  of  excessive  mediocrity. 
Had  I  known  any  of  these  things  two  years  ago,  I  would  have 
written  him  a  letter.  Of  all  things,  I  wish  to  see  his  Idiology 
upon  Montesquieu.  If  you,  with  all  your  iniluence,  have  not 
been  able  to  get  your  own  translation  of  it,  with  your  own  notes 
upon  it,  jTublished  in  four  years,  where  and  what  is  the  freedom 
of  the  American  press?  Mr.  Taylor  of  Hazelwood,  Port  Royal, 
can  have  his  voluminous  and  luminous  works  published  with 
ease  and  despatch. 

The  Uranologia,  as  I  am  told,  is  a  collection  of  plates,  stamps, 
charts  of  the  Heavens  upon  a  large  scale,  representing  all  the 
constellations.  The  work  of  some  Professor  in  Sweden.  It  is 
said  to  be  the  most  perfect  that  ever  has  appeared.  I  have  not 
seen  it.  Why  should  I  ride  fifteen  miles  to  see  it,  when  I  can 
see  the  original  every  clear  evening ;  and  especially  as  Dupuis 
has  almost  made  me  afraid  to  inquire  after  anything  more  of  it 
than  I  can  see  with  my  naked  eye  in  a  star-light  night  ? 

That  the  Pope  will  send  Jesuits  to  this  country,  I  doubt  not ; 
and  the  church  of  England,  missionaries  too.  And  the  Metho- 
dists, and  the  Quakers,  and  the  Moravians,  and  the  Swedenburg- 
ers,  and  the  Menonists,  and  the  Scottish  Kirkers,  and  the  Jacobites, 
and  the  Jacobins,  and  the  Democrats,  and  the  Aristocrats,  and  the 
Monarchists,  and  the  Despotists  of  all  denominations :  and  every 
emissary  of  every  one  of  these  sects  will  find  a  part}  here  already 
formed,  to  give  him  a  cordial  reception.  No  power  or  intelligence 
less  than  Raphael's  moderator,  can  reduce  this  chaos  to  order. 

I  am  charmed  with  the  fluency  and  rapidity  of  your  reasoning 
on  the  state  of  Great  Britain.  I  can  deny  none  of  your  premises ; 
but  I  doubt  your  conclusion.  After  all  the  convvJsions  that  you 
foresee,  they  will  return  to  that  constitution  which  you  say  has 
ruined  them,  and  I  say  has  been  the  source  of  all  their  power  and 
importance.  They  have,  as  you  say,  too  much  sense  and  knowl- 
edge of  liberty,  ever  to  submit  to  simple  monarchy,  or  absolute 
despotism,  on  the  one  hand ;  and  too  much  of  the  devil  in  them 
ever  to  be  governed  by  popular  elections  of  Presidents,  Senators, 
and  Representatives  in  Congress.    Instead  of  "  turning  their  eyes 


CORRESPONDENCE.  49 

to  ns,"  their  innate  feelings  will  turn  them  from  us.  They  have 
been  taught  from  their  cradles  to  despise,  scorn,  insult,  and  abuse 
us.  They  hate  us  more  vigor(5usly  than  they  do  the  French. 
They  would  sooner  adopt  the  simple  monarchy  of  France,  than 
our  republican  institutions.  You  compliment  me  with  more 
knowledge  of  them  than  I  can  assume  or  pretend.  If  I  should 
write  you  a  volume  of  observations  I  made  in  England,  you 
would  pronounce  it  a  satire.  Suppose  the  "  Refrain,"  as,  the 
French  call  it,  or  the  Burthen  of  the  Song,  as  the  English  express 
it,  should  be,  the  Religion,  the  Government,  the  Commerce,  the 
Manufactures,  the  Army  and  Navy  of  Great  Britain,  are  all  re- 
duced to  the  science  of  pounds,  shillings  and  pence.  Elections 
appeared  to  me  a  mere  commercial  traffic ;  mere  bargain  and  sale. 
I  have  been  told  by  sober,  steady  freeholders,  that  "  they  never 
had  been,  and  never  would  go  to  the  poll,  without  being  paid 
for  their  time,  travel  and  expenses."  •  Now,  suppose  an  election 
for  a  President  of  the  British  empire.  There  must  be  a  nomina- 
tion of  candidates  by  a  national  convention,  Congress,  or  caucus 
— ^in  which  would  be  two  parties — Whigs  and  Tories.  Of  course 
two  candidates  at  least  would  be  nominated.  The  empire  is  in- 
stantly divided  into  two  parties  at  least.  Every  man  must  be 
paid  for  his  vote  by  the  candidate  of  his  party.  The  only  ques- 
tion would  be,  which  party  has  the  deepest  purse.  The  same 
reasoning  will  apply  to  elections  of  Senators  and  Representatives 
too.  A  revolution  might  destroy  the  Burroughs  and  the  Inequali- 
ties of  representation,  and  might  produce  more  toleration;  and 
these  acquisitions  might  be  worth  all  they  would  cost ;  but  I  dread 
the  experiment. 

Britain  will  never  be  our  friend  till  we  are  her  master. 

This  will  happen  in  less  time  than  you  and  I  have  been  strug- 
gling with  her  power ;  provided  we  remain  united.  Aye  !  there's 
the  rub  !  I  fear  there  will  be  greater  difficulties  to  preserve  our 
Union,  than  you  and  I,  our  fathers,  brothers,  friends,  disciples 
and  sons  have  had,  to  form  it.  Towards  Great  Britain,  I  would 
adopt  their  own  maxim.  An  EngHsh  jockey  says,  "  If  I  have  a 
wild  horse  to  break,  I  begin  by  convincing  him  I  am  his  master ; 

VOL.  VII.  4 


50  JEFFERSON'S   "WORKS. 

and  then  I  will  convince  him  that  I  am  his  friend."  I  am  weL 
assured  that  nothing  will  restrain  Great  Britam  from  injuring  us, 
but  fear. 

You  think  that  "  in  a  revolution  the  distinction  of  Whig  and 
Tory  would  disappear."  I  cannot  believe  this.  That  distinc- 
tion arises  from  nature  and  society ;  is  now,  and  ever  will  be, 
time  without  end,  among  Negroes,  Indians,  and  Tartars,  as  well 
as  federalists  and  republicans.  Instead  of  "disappearing  since 
Hume  published  his  history,"  that  history  has  only  increased  the 
Tories  and  diminished  the  Whigs.  That  history  has  been  the 
bane  of  Great  Britain.  It  has  destroyed  many  of  the  best  effects 
of  the  revolution  of  1688.  Style  has  governed  the  empire. 
Swift,  Pope  and  Hume,  have  disgraced  all  the  honest  historians. 
Rapin  and  Burnet,  Oldmixen  and  Coke,  contain  more  honest 
truth  than  Hume  and  Clarendon,  and  all  their  disciples  and  imi- 
tators. But  who  reads  any  of  them  at  this  day  ?  Every  one  of 
the  fine  arts  from  the  earliest  times  has  been  enlisted  in  the  ser- 
vice of  superstition  and  despotism.  The  whole  world  at  this  day 
gazes  with  astonishment  at  the  grossest  fictions,  because  they 
have  been  immortalized  by  the  most  exquisite  artists — Homer 
and  Milton,  Phideas  and  Raphael.  The  rabble  of  the  classic 
skies,  and  the  hosts  of  Roman  Catholic  saints  and  angels,  are 
still  adored  in  paint,  and  marble,  and  verse.  Raphael  has  sketched 
the  actors  and  scenes  in  all  Apuleus's  Amours  of  Psyche  and 
Cupid.  Nothing  is  too  offensive  to  morals,  delicacy,  or  decency, 
for  this  painter.  Raphael  has  painted  in  one  of  the  most  osten- 
tatious churches  in  Italy — the  Creation — and  with  what  genius  ? 
God  Almighty  is  represented  as  leaping  into  chaos,  and  boxing 
it  about  with  his  fists,  and  kicking  it  about  with  his  feet,  till  he 
tumbles  it  into  order  ! 

Nothing  is  too  impious  or  profane  for  this  great  master,  who 
has  painted  so  many  inimitable  virgins  and  children. 

To  help  me  on  in  my  career  of  improvement,  I  have  now  read 
four  volumes  of  La  Harpe's  correspondence  with  Paul  and  a  Rus- 
sian minister.  Philosophers!  Never  again  think  of  annuling 
superstition  per  Saltum,     Testine  cente. 


OOEEESPONDENOE.  51 


TO   ME.    MELLISH. 

MoNTioELLo,  Peoembei'  31,  181fi. 
Sir, — Your  favor  of  November  23d,  after  a  very  long  passage, 
is  received,  and  with  it  the  map  which  you  have  been  so  kind 
as  to  send  me,  for  which  I  return  you  many  thanks.  It  is  hand- 
somely executed,  and  on  a  well-chosen  scale  ;  giving  a  luminous 
view  of  the  comparative  possessions  of  different  powers  in  our 
America.  It  is  on  account  of  the  value  I  set  on  it,  that  I  will 
make  some  suggestions.  By  the  charter  of  Louis  XIV.  all  the 
country  comprehending  the  waters  which  flow  into  the  Missis- 
sippi, was  made  a  part  of  Louisiana.  Consequently  its  northern 
boundary  was  the  summit  of  the  highlands  in  which  its  north- 
ern waters  rise.  But  by  the  Xth  Art.  of  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht, 
France  and  England  agreed  to  appoint  commissioners  to  settle  the 
boundary  between  their  possessions  in  that  quarter,  and  those 
commissioners  settled  it  at  the  49th  degree  of  latitude.  See 
Hutchinson's  Topographical  Description  of  Louisiana,  p.  7.  This 
it  was  which  induced  the  British  Commissioners,  in  settling  the 
boundary  with  us,  to  follow  the  northern  water  line  to  the  Lake 
of  the  Woods,  at  the  latitude  of  49°,  and  then  go  off  on  that 
parallel.  This,  then,  is  the  true  northern  boundary  of  Louisiana. 
The  western  boundary  of  Louisiana  is,  rightfully,  the  Rio 
Bravo,  (its  main  stream,)  from  its  mouth  to  its  scarce,  and  thence 
along  the  highlands  and  mountains  dividing  the  waters  of  the 
Mississippi  from  those  of  the  Pacific.  The  usurpations  of  Spain 
on  the  east  side  of  that  river,  have  induced  geographers  to  sup- 
pose the  Puerco  or  Salado  to  be  the  boundary.  The  line  along 
the  highlands  stands  on  the  charter  of  Louis  XIV.  that  of  the 
Rio  Bravo,  on  the  circumstance  that,  when  La  Salle  took  pos- 
session of  the  Bay  of  St.  Bernard,  Panuco  was  the  nearest  pos- 
session of  Spain,  and  the  Rio  Bravo  the  natural  half-way  boun- 
dary between  them. 

On  the  waters  of  the  Pacific,  we  can  found  no  claim  in  right 
of  Louisiana.  If  we  claim  that  country  at  all,  it  must  be  on 
Astor's  settlement  near  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia,  and  the  prin- 


52  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

ciple  of  the  jus  gentium  of  America,  that  when  a  civilized  na- 
tion takes  possession  of  the  mouth  of  a  river  in  a  new  country, 
that  possession  is  considered  as  inckiding  all  its  waters. 

The  line  of  latitude  of  the  southern  source  of  the  multnomat 
might  be  claimed  as  appurtenant  to  Astoria.  For  its  northern 
boundary,  I  believe  an  understanding  has  been  come  to  between 
our  government  and  Russia,  which  might  be  known  from  some 
of  its  members.     I  do  not  know  it. 

Although  the  irksomeness  of  writing,  which  you  may  perceive 
from  the  present  letter,  and  its  labor,  oblige  me  now  to  withdraw 
from  letter  writing,  yet  the  wish  that  your  map  should  set  to 
rights  the  ideas  of  our  own  countrymen,  as  well  as  foreign  n^i- 
tions,  as  to  our  correct  boundaries,  has  induced  me  to  make  these 
suggestions,  that  you  may  bestow  on  them  whatever  inquiry 
they  may  merit.     I  salute  you  with  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    MRS.    ADAMS. 

MoNTioELLO,  January  11,  1817. 

I  owe  you,  dear  Madam,  a  thousand  thanks  for  the  letters  com- 
municated in  your  favor  of  December  15th,  and  now  returned. 
They  give  me  more  information  than  I  possessed  before,  of  the 
family  of  Mr.  Tracy.  But  what  is  infinitely  interesting,  is  the 
scene  of  the  exchange  of  Louis  XVIII.  for  Bonaparte.  What 
lessons  of  wisdom  Mr.  Adams  must  have  read  in  that  short  space 
of  time  !  More  than  fall  to  the  lot  of  others  in  the  course  of  a 
long  life.  Man,  and  the  man  of  Paris,  under  those  circumstances, 
must  have  been  a  subject  of  profound  speculation !  It  would 
be  a  singular  addition  to  that  spectacle,  to  see  the  same  beast  in 
the  cage  of  St.  Helena,  like  a  lion  in  the  tower.  That  is  prob- 
ably the  closing  verse  of  the  chapter  of  his  crimes.  But  not  so 
with  Louis.     He  has  other  vicissitudes  to  go  through. 

I  communicated  the  letters,  according  to  your  permission,  to 
my  grand-daughter,  Ellen  Randolph,  who  read  them  with  pleas- 
ure and  edification.     She  is  justly  sensible  of,  and  flattered  by 


CORRESPONDENCE.  53 

your  kind  notice  of  her  ;  and  additionally  so,  by  the  favorable 
recollections  of  our  northern  yisiting  friends.  If  Monticello  has 
anything  which  has  merited  their  remembrance,  it  gives  it  a 
value  the  more  in  our  estimation ;  and  could  I,  in  the  spirit  of 
your  wish,  count  backwards  a  score  of  years,  it  would  not  be 
long  before  Ellen  and  myself  would  pay  our  homage  personally 
to  Q,uincy.  But  those  twenty  years !  Alas  !  where  are  they  ? 
With  those  beyond  the  flood.  Our  next  meeting  must  then  be 
in  the  country  to  which  they  have  flown, — a  country  for  us  not 
now  very  distant.  For  this  journey  we  shall  need  neither  gold  nor 
silver  in  our  purse,  nor  scrip,  nor  coats,  nor  staves.  Nor  is  the 
provision  for  it  more  easy  than  the  preparation  has  been  kind. 
Nothing  proves  more  than  this,  that  the  Being  who  presides  over 
the  world  is  essentially  benevolent.  Stealing  from  us,  one  by 
one,  the  faculties  of  enjoyment,  searing  our  sensibilities,  leading 
us,  like  the  horse  in  his  mill,  round  and  round  the  same  beaten 
circle, 

To  see  what  we  have  seen, 

To  taste  the  tasted,  and  at  each  return 

Less  tasteful ;  o'er  our  palates  to  decant 

Another  vintage — 

Untn  satiated  and  fatigued  with  this  leaden  iteration,  we  ask  our 
own  conge.  I  heard  once  a  very  old  friend,  who  had  troubled 
himself  with  neither  poets  nor  philosophers,  say  the  same  thing 
in  plain  prose,  that  he  was  tired  of  pulling  off  his  shoes  and 
stockings  at  night,  and  putting  them  on  again  in  the  morning. 
The  wish  to  stay  here  is  thus  gradually  extinguished  ;  but  not 
so  easily  that  of  returning  once,  in  awhile,  to  see  how  things 
have  gone  on.  Perhaps,  however,  one  of  the  elements  of  future 
felicity  is  to  be  a  constant  and  unimpassioned  view  of  what  is 
passing  here.  If  so,  this  may  well  supply  the  wish  of  occasional 
visits.  Mercier  has  given  us  a  vision  of  the  year  2440  ;  but 
prophecy  is  one  thing,  and  history  another.  On  the  whole,  how- 
ever, perhaps  it  is  wise  and  well  to  be  contented  with  the  good 
things  which  the  master  of  the  feast  places  before  us,  and  to  be 
thankful  for  what  we  have,  rather  than  thoughtful  about  what 


54  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

we  have  not.  You  and  I,  dear  Madam,  have  aheady  had  more 
than  an  ordinary  portion  of  life,  and  more,  too,  of  health  than  the 
general  measure.  On  this  score  I  owe  boundless  thankfulness. 
Your  health  was,  some  time  ago,  not  so  good  as  it  has  been ;  and 
I  perceive  in  the  letters  communicated,  some  complaints  still.  I 
hops  it  is  restored ;  and  that  life  and  health  may  be  continued  to 
you  as  many  years  as  yourself  shall  wish,  is  the  sincere  prayer 
of  your  affectionate  and  respectful  friend. 


TO    JOHN   ADAMS. 

MoNTicELLO,  January  11,  ISlT. 
Deab  Sik, — Forty-three  volumes  read  in  one  year,  and  twelve 
of  them  quarto  !  Dear  Sir,  how  I  envy  you  !  Half  a  dozen 
octavos  in  that  space  of  time,  are  as  much  as  I  am  allowed.  I 
can  read  by  candlelight  only,  and  stealing  long  hours  from  my 
rest ;  nor  would  that  time  be  indulged  to  me,  could  I  by  that 
light  see  to  write.  Prom  sunrise  to  one  or  two  o'clock,  and 
often  from  dinner  to  dark,  I  am  drudging  at  the  writing  table. 
And  all  this  to  answer  letters  into  which  neither  interest  nor  in- 
clination on  my  part  enters ;  and  often  from  persons  whose  names 
I  have  never  before  heard.  Yet,  writing  civilly,  it  is  hard  to  re- 
fuse them  civil  answers.  This  is  the  burthen  of  my  life,  a  very 
grievous  one  indeed,  and  one  which  I  must  get  rid  of.  Dela- 
plaine  lately  requested  me  to  give  him  a  line  on  the  subject  of 
his  book  ;  meaning,  as  I  well  knew,  to  publish  it.  This  I  con- 
stantly refuse  ;  but  in  this  instance  yielded,  that  in  saying  a  word 
for  him,  I  might  say  two  for  myself.  I  expressed  in  it  freely  my 
suflFerings  from  this  source ;  hoping  it  would  have  the  effect  of 
an  indirect  appeal  to  the  discretion  of  those,  strangers  and  others, 
who,  in  the  most  friendly  dispositions,  oppress  me  with  their 
concerns,  their  pursuits,  their  projects,  inventions  and  specula- 
tions, political,  moral,  religious,  mechanical,  mathematical,  his- 
torical, &c.,  &c.,  &c.  I  hope  the  appeal  will  bring  me  relief, 
and  that  I  shall  be  left  to  exercise  and  enjoy  correspondence  with 


CORRESPONDENCE.  55 

the  friends  I  love,  and  on  subjects  which  they,  or  my  own  in- 
clinations present.  In  that  case,  your  letters  shall  not  be  so  long 
on  my  files  unanswered,  as  sometimes  they  have  been,  to  my 
great  mortification. 

To  advert  now  to  the  subjects  of  those  of  December  the  12th 
and  16th.  Tracy's  Commentaries  on  Montesquieu  have  never 
been  published  in  the  original.  Duane  printed  a  translation  from 
th«  original  manuscript  a  few  years  ago.  It  sold,  I  believe, 
readily,  and  whether  a  copy  can  now  be  had,  I  doubt.  If  it  can, 
you  will  receive  it  from  my  bookseller  in  Philadelphia,  to  whom 
I  now  write  for  that  purpose.  Tracy  comprehends,  under  the 
word  "  Ideology,"  all  the  subjects  which  the  French  term  Morale, 
as  the  correlative  to  Physique.  His  works  on  Logic,  Govern- 
ment, Political  Economy  and  Morality,  he  considers  as  making 
up  the  circle  of  ideological  subjects,  or  of  those  which  are  within 
the  scope  of  the  understanding,  and  not  of  the  senses.  His 
Logic  occupies  exactly  the  ground  of  Locke's  work  on  the  Un- 
derstanding. The  translation  of  that  on  Political  Economy  is 
now  printing  ;  but  it  is  no  translation  of  mine.  I  have  only  had 
the  correction  of  it,  which  was,  indeed,  very  laborious.  Le  pre- 
mier jet  having  been  by  some  one  who  understood  neither 
French  or  English,  it  was  impossible  to  make  it  more  than  faith- 
ful.    But  it  is  a  valuable  work. 

The  result  of  your  fifty  or  sixty  years  of  religious  reading,  in 
the  four  words,  "  Be  just  and  good,"  is  that  in  which  all  our  in- 
quiries must  end  ;  as  the  riddles  of  all  the  priesthoods  end  in  four 
more,  "ttfii  panis,  ibi  deus."  What  all  agree  in,  is  probably 
right.  What  no  two  agree  in,  most  probably  wrong.  One  of 
our  fan-coloring  biographers,  who  paints  small  men  as  very  great, 
inquired  of  me  lately,  with  real  affection  too,  whether  he  might 
consider  as  authentic,  the  change  in  my  religion  much  spoken 
of  in  some  circles.  Now  this  supposed  that  they  knew  what 
had  been  my  religion  before,  taking  for  it  the  word  of  their 
priests,  whom  I  certainly  never  made  the  confidants  of  my  creed. 
My  answer  was,  "  say  nothing  of  my  religion.  It  is  known  to 
my  God  and  myself  alone.     Its  evidence  before  the  world  is  to 


56  JEFFEESOIT'S  WORKS. 

be  sought  in  my  life  ;  if  that  has  been  honest  and  dutiful  to  so- 
ciety, the  rehgion  which  has  regulated  it  cannot  be  a  bad  one." 
Affectionately  adien. 


TO    WILLIAM   LEE,  ESQ. 

MoNTiOELLo,  January  16.  1817. 

Deak  Sir, — I  received,  three  days  ago,  a  letter  from  M.  Martin, 
2d  Vice  President,  and  M.  Parmantier,  Secretary  of  "  the  French 
Agricultural  and  Manufacturing  Society,"  dated  at  Philadelphia  the 
5th  instant.  It  covered  resolutions  proposing  to  apply  to  Con- 
gress for  a  grant  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  acres  of 
land  on  the  Tombigbee,  and  stating  some  of  the  general  princi- 
ples on  which  the  society  was  to  be  founded  ;  and  their  letter 
requested  me  to  tr^ce  for  them  the  basis  of  a  social  pact  for  the 
local  regulations  of  their  society,  and  to  address  the  answer  to 
yourself,  their  1st  Vice  President  at  Washington.  No  one  can 
be  more  sensible  than  I  am  of  the  honor  of  their  confidence  in 
me,  so  flatteringly  manifested  in  this  resolution ;  and  certainly 
no  one  can  feel  stronger  dispositions  than  myself  to  be  useful  to 
them,  as  well  in  return  for  this  great  mark  of  their  respect,  as 
from  feelings  for  the  situation  of  strangers,  forced  by  the  misfor- 
tunes of  their  native  country  to  seek  another  by  adoption,  so 
distant  and  so  different  from  that  in  all  its  circumstances.  I 
commiserate  the  hardships  they  have  to  encounter,  and  equally 
applaud  the  resolution  with  which  they  meet  them,  as  well  as 
the  principles  proposed  for  their  government.  That  their  emi- 
gration may  be  for  the  happiness  of  their  descendants,  I  can  be- 
lieve ;  but  from  the  knowledge  I  have  of  the  country  they  have 
left,  and  its  state  of  social  intercourse  and  comfort,  their  own 
personal  happiness  will  undergo  severe  trial  here.  The  laws, 
however,  which  must  effect  this  must  flow  from  their  own  habits, 
their  own  feelings,  and  the  resources  of  their  own  minds.  No 
stranger  to  these  could  possibly  propose  regulations  adapted  to 
them.  Every  people  have  their  own  particular  habits,  ways  of 
ihinking,  manners,  &c.,  which  have  grown  up  with  them  from 


CORRESPONDENCE.  57 

their  infancy  are  become  a  part  ot  their  nature,  and  to  which  the 
regulations  which  are  to  make  them  happy  must  be  accommodated. 
No  member  of  a  foreign  country  can  have  a  sufficient  sympathy 
with  these.  The  institutions  of  Lycui-gus,  for  example,  would 
not  have  suited  Athens,  nor  those  of  Solon,  Lacedsemon.  The 
organizations  of  Locke  were  impracticable  for  Carolina,  and  those 
of  Rousseau  and  Mably  for  Poland.  Turning  inwardly  on  my- 
self from  these  eminent  illustrations  of  the  truth  of  my  observa- 
tion, I  feel  all  the  presumption  it  would  manifest,  should  I  under- 
take to  do  what  this  respectable  society  is  alone  qualified  to  do 
suitably  for  itself.  There  are  some  preliminary  questions,  too, 
which  are  particularly  for  their  own  consideration.  Is  it  pro- 
posed that  this  shall  be  a  separate  State  ?  or  a  county  of  a  State  ? 
or  a  mere  voluntary  association,  as  those  of  the  Q,uakers,  Dun- 
kars,  Menonists  ?  A  separate  State  it  cannot  be,  because  from 
the  tract  it  asks  it  would  not  be  more  than  twenty  miles  square  ; 
and  in  establishing  new  States,  regard  is  had  to  a  certain  degree 
of  equality  in  size.  If  it  is  to  be  a  county  of  a  State,  it  cannot 
be  governed  by  its  own  laws,  but  must  be  subject  to  those  of  the 
State  of  which  it  is  a  part.  If  merely  a  voluntary  association, 
the  submission  of  its  members  will  be  merely  voluntary  also  ;  as 
no  act  of  coercion  would  be  permitted  by  the  general  law. 
These  considerations  must  control  the  society,  and  themselves 
alone  can  modify  their  own  intentions  and  wishes  to  them.  With 
this  apology  for  declining  a  task  to  which  I  am  so  unequal,  I 
pray  them  to  be  assured  of  my  sincere  wishes  for  their  success 
and  happiness,  and  yourself  particularly  of  my  high  considera- 
tion and  esteem. 


TO  DOCTOE  THOMAS  HUMPHREYS. 

MoNTiCELLO,  February  8,  ISlT. 

3eae  Sik, — Your  favor  of  January  2d  did  not  come  to  my 
hands  until  the  5th  instant.  I  concur  entirely  in  your  leading 
principles  of  gradual  emancipation,  of  establishment  on  the  coast 


58  JEFFERSON'S   VOEKS. 

of  Africa,  and  the  patronage  of  our  nation  until  the  emigrants 
shall  be  able  to  protect  themselves.  The  subordinate  details 
might  be  easily  arranged.  But  the  bare  proposition  of  purchase 
by  the  United  States  generally,  would  excite  infinite  indignation 
in  all  the  States  north  of  Maryland.  The  sacrifice  must  fall  on 
the  States  alone  which  hold  them  ;  and  the  difficult  question  will 
be  how  to  lessen  this  so  as  to  reconcile  our  fellow  citizens  to  it. 
Personally  I  am  ready  and  desirous  to  niake  any  sacrifice  which 
shall  ensure  their  gradual  but  complete  retirement  from  the  State, 
and  efiectually,  at  the  same  time,  establish  them  elsewhere  in  free- 
dom and  safety.  But  I  have  not  perceived  the  growth  of  this 
disposition  in  the  rising  generation,  of  which  I  once  had  san- 
guine hopes.  No  symptoms  inform  me  that  it  will  take  place  in 
my  day.  I  leave  it,  therefore,  to  time,  and  not  at  all  without 
hope  that  the  day  will  come,  equally  desirable  and  welcome  to 
us  as  to  them.  Perhaps  the  proposition  now  on  the  carpet  at 
Washington  to  provide  an  establishment  on  the  coast  of  Africa 
for  voluntary  emigrations  of  people  of  color,  may  be  the  corner 
stone  of  this  future  edifice.  Praying  for  its  completion  as  early 
as  may  most  promote  the  good  of  all,  I  salute  you  with  great 
esteem  and  respect. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFEKSON. 

QuiNOY,  April  19,  1811. 

Dear  Sir, — My  loving  and  beloved  friend  Pickering,  has  been 
pleased  to  inform  the  world  that  I  have  "  few  friends."  I  want- 
ed to  whip  the  rogue,  and  I  had  it  in  my  power,  if  it  had  been 
in  my  will  to  do  it,  till  the  blood  came.  But  all  my  real  friends, 
as  I  thought  then,  with  Dexter  and  Gray  at  their  head,  insisted 
"  that  I  should  not  say  a  word  ;  that  nothing  that  such  a  person 
could  write  would  do  me  the  least  injury ;  that  it  would  betray 
the  constitution  and  the  government,  if  a  President,  out  or  in, 
should  enter  into  a  newspaper'  controversy  with  one  of  his  min- 
isters, whom  he  had  removed  from  his  office,  in.  justification  of 


OORRESPONDENOE.  59 

himself  for  that  removal,  or  anything  else  ;"  and  they  talked  a 
great  deal  about  the  Dignity  of  the  office  of  President,  which  I 
do  not  find  that  any  other  person,  public  or  private  regards  very 
much. 

Nevertheless,  I  fear  that  Mr.  Pickering's  information  is  too  true. 
It  is  impossible  that  any  man  should  run  such  a  gauntlet  as  I 
have  been  driven  through,  and  have  many  friends  at  last.  This 
"  all  who  know  me  know,"  though  I  cannot  say  ;  who  love  me, 
tell. 

I  have,  however,  either  friends  who  wish  to  amuse  and  solace 
my  old  age,  or  enemies  who  mean  to  heap  coals  of  fire  on  my 
head,  and  kill  me  with  kindness ;  for  they  overwhelm  me  with 
books  from  all  quarters,  enough  to  obfuscate  all  eyes,  and  smoth- 
er and  stifle  all  human  understanding.  Chateaubriand,  Grinim, 
Tucker,  Dupuis,  La  Harpe,  Sismondi,  Eustace,  a  new  transla- 
tion of  Herodotus,  by  Bedloe,  with  more  notes  than  text.  What 
should  I  do  with  all  this  lumber  ?  I  make  my  "  woman-kind," 
as  the  antiquary  expresses  it,  read  to  me  all  the  English,  but  as 
they  will  not  read  the  French,  I  am  obliged  to  excruciate  my 
eyes  to  read  it  myself ;  and  all  to  what  purpose  ?  I  verily  be- 
lieve I  was  as  wise  and  good,  seventy  years  ago,  as  I  am  now. 
At  that  period  Lemuel  Bryant  was  my  parish  priest,  and  Joseph 
Cleverly  my  Latin  schoolmaster.  Lemuel  was  a  jolly,  jocular, 
and  liberal  scholar  and  divine.  Joseph  a  scholar  and  a  gentle- 
man ;  but  a  bigoted  Episcopalian,  of  the  school  of  Bishop 
Saunders,  and  Dr.  Hicks, — a  downright  conscientious,  passive 
obedience  man,  in  Church  and  State.  The  parson  and  the  peda- 
gogue lived  much  together,  but  were  eternally  disputing  about 
government  and  religion.  One  day,  when  the  schoolmaster  had 
been  more  than  commonly  fanatical,  and  declared  "  if  he  were 
a  monarch,  he  would  have  but  one  religion  in  his  dominions  ;" 
the  parson  coolly  replied,  "  Cleverly  !  you  would  be  the  best  man 
in  the  world  if  you  had  no  reUgion." 

Twenty  times  in  the  course  of  my  late  reading  have  I  been 
on  the  point  of  breaking  out,  "  This  would  be  the  best  of  all 
possible  worlds,  if  there  were  no  rehgion  in  it ! ! !"     But  in  this 


60  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

exclamation  I  should  have  been  as  fanatical  as  Bryant  or  Clever- 
ly. Without  religion  this  world  would  be  something  not  fit  to 
be  mentioned  in  polite  society,  I  mean  hell.  So  far  from  be- 
lieving in  the  total  and  universal  depravity  of  human  nature,  I 
believe  there  is  no'  individual  totally  depraved.  The  most  aban- 
doned scoundrel  that  ever  existed,  never  yet  wholly  extinguished 
his  conscience,  and  while  conscience  remains  there  is  some  re- 
ligion. Popes,  Jesuits,  and  Sorbonists,  and  Inquisitors,  have  some 
conscience  and  some  religion.  So  had  Marius  and  Sylla,  Caesar, 
Catiline  and  Antony;  and  Augustus  had  not  much  more,  let 
Virgil  and  Horace  say  what  they  will. 

What  shall  we  think  of  Virgil  and  Horace,  Sallust,  duintil- 
ian,  Pliny,  and  even  Tacitus  ?  and  even  Cicero,  Brutus  and  Sene- 
ca ?  Pompey  I  leave  out  of  the  question,  as  a  mere  politician  and 
soldier.  Every  one  of  the  great  creatures  has  left  indelible 
marks  of  conscience,  and  consequently  of  religion,  though  every 
one  of  them  has  left  abundant  proofs  of  profligate  violations  of 
their  consciences  by  their  little  and  great  passions  and  paltry  in- 
terests. 

The  vast  prospect  of  mankind,  which  these  books  have  passed 
in  review  before  me,  from  the  most  ancient  records,  histories,  tra- 
ditions and  fables,  that'  remain  to  us  to  the  present  day,  has  sick- 
ened my  very  soul,  and  almost  reconciled  me  to  Swift's  travels 
among  the  Yahoos  ;  yet  I  never  can  be  a  misanthrope — Homo 
sum.  I  must  hate  myself  before  I .  can  hate  my  fellow  men  ; 
and  that  I  cannot,  and  will  not  do.  No  !  I  will  not  hate  any  of 
them,  base,  brutal,  and  devilish  as  some  of  them  have  been  to  me. 

From  the  bottom  of  my  soul,  I  pity  my  fellow  men.  Fears 
and  terrors  appear  to  have  produced  an  universal  credulity.  Fears 
of  calamities  in  life,  and  punishments  after  death,  seem  to  have 
possessed  the  souls  of  all  men.  But  fear  of  pain  and  death, 
here,  do  not  seem  to  have  been  so  unconquerable,  as  fear  of  what 
is  to  come  hereafter.  Priests,  Hierophants,  Popes,  Despots,  Em- 
perors, Kings,  Princes,  Nobles,  have  been  as  credulous  as  shoe- 
blacks, boots  and  kitchen  scullions.  The  former  seem  to  have 
believed  in  their  divine  rights  as  sincerely  as  the  latter. 


OOERESPONDENOE.  61 

Auto  de  fees,  in  Spain  and  Portugal,  have  been  celebrated  with 
as  good  faith  as  excommunications  have  been  practised  in  Con- 
necticut, or  as  baptisms  have  been  refused  in  Philadelphia. 

How  is  it  possible  that  mankind  should  submit  to  be  governed, 
as  they  have  been,  is  to  me  an  inscrutable  mystery.  How  they 
could  bear  to  be  taxed  to  build  the  temple  of  Diana  at  Ephesus, 
the  pyramids  of  Egypt,  Saint  Peter's  at  Rome,  Notre  Dame  at 
Paris,  St.  Paul's  in  London,  with  a  million  et  ceteras,  when  my 
navy  yards  and  my  quasi  army  made  such  a  popMar  clamor,  I 
know  not.  Yet  all  my  peccadillos  never  excited  such  a  rage  as 
the  late  compensation  law  ! 

I  congratulate  you  on  the  late  election  in  Connecticut.  It  is 
a  kind  of  epocha.  Several  causes  have  conspired.  One  which 
you  would  not  suspect.  Some  one,  no  doubt  instigated  by  the 
devil,  has  taken  it  into  his  head  to  print  a  new  edition  of  the 
"  Independent  Whig,"  even  in  Connecticut,  and  has  scattered  the 
volumes  through  the  State.  These  volumes,  it  is  said,  have  pro- 
duced a  burst  of  indignation  against  priestcraft,  bigotry  and  in- 
tolerance, and  in  conjunction  with  other  causes,  have  produced 
the  late  election. 

When  writing  to  you  I  never  know  when  to  subscribe, 

J.  A. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTicELLo,  May  5,  1817. 

Dear  Sik, — Absences  and  avocations  had  prevented  my  ac- 
knowledging your  favor  of  February  the  2d,  when  that  of  April 
the  19th  arrived.  I  had  not  the  pleasure  of  receiving  the  former 
by  the  hands  of  Mr.  Lyman.  His  business  probably  carried  him 
in  another  direction  ;  for  I  am  far  inland,  and  distant  from  the 
great  line  of  communication  between  the  trading  cities.  Your 
recommendations  are  always  welcome,  for  indeed,  the  subjects 
of  them  always  merit  that  welcome,  and  some  of  them  in  an  ex- 
traordinary degree.  They  make  us  acquainted  with  what  there 
is  excellent  in  our  ancient  sister  State  of  Massachusetts,  once 


62  JEFFERSON'S    "WOEKS. 

venerated  and  beloved,  and  still  hanging  on  our  hopes,  for  what 
need  we  despair  of  after  the  resurrection  of  Connecticut  to  light 
and  liberality.  I  had  believed  that  the  last  retreat  of  monkish 
darkness,  bigotry,  and  abhorrence  of  those  advances  of  the  mind 
which  had  carried  the  other  States  a  century  ahead  of  them. 
They  seemed  still  to  be  exactly  where  their  forefathers  were 
when  they  schismatized  from  the  covenant  of  works,  and  to  con- 
sider as  dangerous  heresies  all  innovations  good  or  bad.  I  join 
you,  therefore,  in  sincere  congratulations  that  this  den  of  the 
priesthood  is  at  length  broken  up,  and  that  a  Protestant  Popedom 
is  no  longer  to  disgrace  the  American  history  and  character.  If 
by  religion  we  are  to  understand  sectarian  dogmas,  in  which  no 
two  of  them  agree,  then  your  exclamation  on  that  hypothesis  is 
just,  "  that  this  would  be  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds,  if  there 
were  no  religion  in  it."  But  if  the  moral  precepts,  innate  in  man, 
and  made  a  part  of  his  physical  constitution,  as  necessary  for  a 
social  being,  if  the  sublime  doctrines  of  philanthropism  and  deism 
taught  us  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  in  which  all  agree,  constitute 
true  religion,  then,  without  it,  this  would  be,  as  you  again  say, 
"  something  not  fit  to  be  named,  even  indeed,  a  hell." 

You  certainly  acted  wisely  in  taking  no  notice  of  what  the 
malice  of  Pickering  could  say  of  you.  ^Were  such  things  to  be 
answered,  our  lives  would  be  wasted  in  the  filth  of  fendings  and 
provings,  instead  of  being  employed  in  promoting  the  happiness 
and  prosperity  of  our  fellow  citizens.  The  tenor  of  your  life  is 
the  proper  and  sufiicient  answer.  It  is  fortunate  for  those  in 
public  trust,  that  posterity  will  judge  them  by  their  works,  and 
not  by  the  malignant  vituperations  and  invectives  of  the  Picker- 
ings and  Gardiners  of  their  age.  After  all,  men  of  energy  of 
character  must  have  enemies ;  because  there  are  two  sides  to 
every  question,  .ind  taking  one  with  decision,  and  acting  on  it 
with  effect,  those  who  take  the  other  will  of  course  be  hostile  in 
proportion  as  they  feel  that  eff'ect.  Thus,  in  the  revolution,  Han- 
cock and  the  Adamses  were  the  raw-head  and  bloody  bones  of 
tories  and  traitors  who  yet  knew  nothing  of  you  personally  but 
what  was  good.     I  do  not  entertain  your  apprehensions  for  the 


COEEESPONDENCE.  63 

happiness  of  our  brother  Madison  in  a  state  of  retirement.  Such 
a  mind  as  his,  fraught  with  information  and  with  matter  for  re- 
flection, can  never  know  ennui.  Besides,  there  will  always  be 
work  enough  cut  out  for  him  to  continue  his  active  usefulness  to 
his  country.  For  example,  he  and  Monroe  (the  President)  are 
now  here  on  the  work  of  a  collegiate  institution  to  be  established 
in  our  neighborhood,  of  which  they  and  myself  are  three  of  six 
visitors.  This,  if  it  succeeds,  will  raise  up  children  for  Mr.  Mad- 
ison to  employ  his  attention  through  life.  I  say  if  it  succeeds  ; 
for  we  have  two  very  essential  wants  in  our  way,  first,  means  to 
compass  our  views ;  and,  second,  men  qualified  to  fulfil  them. 
And  these,  you  will  agree,  are  essential  wants  indeed. 

I  am  glad  to  find  you  have  a  copy  of  Sismondi,  because  his 
is  a  field  familiar  to  you,  and  on  which  you  can  judge  him.  His 
work  is  highly  praised,  but  I  have  not  yet  read  it.  I  have  been 
occupied  and  delighted  with  reading  another  work,  the  title  of 
which  did  not  promise  much  useful  information  or  amusement, 
"  V Italia  avanti  il  dominio  dei  Romani  dal  Micali."  It  has 
often,  you  know,  been  a  subject  of  regret,  that  Carthage  had  no 
writer  to  give  her  side  of  her  own  history,  while  her  wealth, 
power  and  splendor,  prove  she  must  have  had  a  very  distinguish- 
ed policy  and  government.  Micali  has  given  the  counterpart  of 
the  Roman  history,  for  the  nations  over  which  they  extended 
their  dominion.  For  this  he  has  gleaned  up  matter  from  every 
quarter,  and  furnished  materials  for  reflection  and  digestion  to 
those  who,  thinking  as  they  read,  have  perceived  that  there  was 
a  great  deal  of  matter  behind  the  curtain,  could  that  be  fully 
withdrawn.  He  certainly  gives  new  views  of  a  nation  whose 
splendor  has  masked  and  palliated  their  barbarous  ambition.  1 
am  now  reading  Botta's  history  of  our  own  Revolution.  Bating 
the  ancient  practice  which  he  has  adopted,  of  putting  speeches 
into  mouths  which  never  made  them,  and  fancying  motives  of 
action  which  we  never  felt,  he  has  given  that  history  with  more 
detail,  precision  and  candor,  than  any  writer  I  have  yet  met  with. 
It  is,  to  be  sure,  compiled  from  those  writers  ;  but  it  is  a  good  se- 


64  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

cretion  of  their  matter,  the  pure  from  the  impure,  and  presented 
in  a  just  sense  of  right,  in  opposition  to  usurpation. 

Accept  assurances  for  Mrs.  Adams  and  yourself  of  my  affec- 
tionate esteem  and  respect. 


TO    DB.    JOSEPHUS    B.    STUAET. 

MoNTioELLo,  May  10,  1S17. 

Deab  Sib, — ^Your  favor  of  April  2d  is  duly  received.  I  am 
very  sensible  of  the  partiality  with  which  you  are  so  good  as  to 
review  the  course  I  have  held  in  public  life,  and  I  have  also  to 
be  thankful  to  mjr  fellow-citizens  for  a  like  indulgence  generally 
shown  to  my  endeavors  to  be  useful  to  them.  They  give  quite 
as  much  credit  as  is  merited  to  the  difficulties  supposed  to  attend 
the  public  administration.  There  are  no  mysteries  in  it.  Diffi- 
culties indeed  sometimes  arise  ;  but  common  sense  and  honest  in- 
tentions will  generally  steer  through  them,  and,  where  they  cannot 
be  surmounted,  I  have  ever  seen  the  well-intentioned  part  of  our 
fellow  citizens  sufficiently  disposed  not  to  look  for  impossibilities. 
We  all  know  that  a  farm,  however  large,  is  not  more  difficult  to 
direct  than  a  garden,  and  does  not  call  for  more  attention  or  skill. 

I  hope  with  you  that  the  policy  of  our  country  will  settle  down 
"with  as  much  navigation  and  commerce  only  as  our  own  ex- 
changes .will  require,  and  that  the  disadvantage  will  be  seen  of 
our  undertaking  to  carry  on  that  of  other  nations.  This,  indeed, 
may  bring  gain  to  a  few  individuals,  and  enable  them  to  call  off 
from  our  farms  more  laborers  to  be  converted  into  lackeys  anr' 
grooms  for  them,  but  it  will  bring  nothing  to  our  country  bu 
wars,  debt,  and  dilapidation.  This  has  been  the  course  of  Eng- 
land, and  her  examples  have  fearful  influence  on  us.  In  copy 
ing  her  we  do  not  seem  to  consider  that  like  premises  induce  like 
consequences.  The  bank  mania  is  one  of  the  most  threatening 
of  these  imitations.  It  is  raising  up  a  monied  aristocracy  in  jur 
country  which  has  already  set  the  government  at  defiance,  and 
although  forced  at  length  to  yield  a  little  on  this  first  essay  of 


CORRESPONDENCE.  65 

their  strength,  their  principles  are  nnyielded  and  unyielding. 
These  have  taken  deep  root  in  the  hearts  of  that  class  from  which 
our  legislators  are  drawn,  and  the  sop  to  Cerberus  from  fable  has 
become  history.  Their  principles  lay  hold  of  the  good,  their 
pelf  of  the  bad,  and  thus  those  whom  the  constitution  had  placed 
as  guards  to  its  portals,  are  sophisticated  or  suborned  from  their 
duties.  That  paper  money  has  some  advantages,  is  admitted. 
But  that  its  abuses  also  are  inevitable,  and,  by  breaking  up  the 
measure  of  value,  makes  a  lottery  of  all  private  property,  cannot 
be  denied.  Shall  we  ever  be  able  to  put  a  constitutional  veto  on  it  ? 
You  say  I  must  go  to  writing  history.  While  in  public  life  I 
had  not  time,  and  now  thai,  I  am  retired,  I  am  past  the  time. 
To  write  history  requires  a  whole  life  of  observation,  of  inquiry, 
of  labor  and  correction.  Its  materials  are  not  to  be  found  among 
the  ruins  of  a  decayed  memory.  At  this  day  I  should  begin 
where  I  ought  to  have  left  off.  The  "  solve  senes  centem  equum" 
is  a  precept  we  learn  in  youth  but  for  the  practice  of  age ;  and 
were  I  to  disregard  it,  it  would  be  but  a  proof  the  more  of  its 
soundness.  If  anything  has  ever  merited  to  me  the  respect  of 
my  fellow  citizens,  themselves,  I  hope,  would  wish  me  not  to 
lose  it  by  exposing  the  decay  of  faculties  of  which  it  was  the  re- 
ward. I  must  then,  dear  Sir,  leave  to  yourself  and  your  brethren 
of  the  rising  generation,  to  arraign  at  your  tribunal  the  actions 
of  your  predecessors,  and  to  pronounce  the  sentence  they  may 
have  merited  or  incurred.  If  the  sacrifices  of  that  age  have  re- 
sulted in  the  good  of  this,  then  all  is  well,  and  we  shall  be  re- 
warded by  their  approbation,  and  shall  be  authorized  to  say,  "  go 
ye  and  do  likewise."  To  yourself  I  tender  personally  the  assur- 
ance of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    MAK^UIS    DE    LA    FArETTt. 

MoNTioEiLO,  May  14,  1817. 


Although,  dear  Sir,  much  retired  from  the  world,  and  med- 
dling little  in  its  concerns,  yet  I  think  it  almost  a  religious  duty  to 


vol..  VII. 


(56  J-EFFERSON'S    'WORKS. 

salute  at  times  my  old  friends,  were  it  only  to  say  and  to  know 
that  "  all's  well."  Our  hobby  has  been  politics  ;  bat  all  here  is 
so  quiet,  and  with  you  so  desperate,  that  little  matter  is  furnished 
us  for  active  attention.  With  you  too,  it  has  long  been  forbid- 
den ground,  and  therefore  imprudent  for  a  foreign  friend  to  tread, 
in  writing  to  you.  But  although  our  speculations  might  be  in- 
trusive, our  prayers  cannot  but  be  acceptable,  and  mine  are  sin- 
cerely offered  for  the  well-being  of  France.  What  government 
she  can  bear,  depends  not  on  the  state  of  science,  however  ex- 
alted, in  a  select  band  of  enlightened  men,  but  on  the  condition 
of  the  general  mind.  That,  I  am  sure,  is  advanced  and  will  ad- 
vance ;  and  the  last  change  of  government  was  fortunate,  inas- 
much as  the  new  will  be  less  obstructive  to  the  effects  of  that  ad- 
vancement. For  I  consider  your  foreign  military  oppressions  as 
an  ephemeral  obstacle  only. 

Here  all  is  quiet.  The  British  war  has  left  us  in  debt ;  but 
that  is  a  cheap  price  for  the  good  it  has  done  us.  The  establish- 
ment of  the  necessary  manufactures  among  ourselves,  the  proof 
that  our  government  is  solid,  can  stand  the  shock  of  war,  and  is  , 
superior  even  to  civil  schism,  are  precious  facts  for  us ;  and  of 
these  the  strongest  proofs  were  furnished,  when,  with  four  east- 
ern States  tied  to  us,  as  dead  to  living  bodies,  ail  doubt  was  re- 
moved as  to  the  achievements  of  the  war,  had  it  continued.  But 
its  best  effect  has  been  the  complete  suppression  of  party.  The 
federalists  who  were  truly  American,  and  their  great  mass  was  so, 
have  separated  from  their  brethren  who  were  mere  Auglomen,  and 
are  received  with  cordiality  into  the  republican  ranks.  Even 
Connecticut,  as  a  State,  and  the  last  one  expected  to  yield  its 
steady  habits  (which  were  essentially  bigoted  in  politics  as  well 
as  religion),  has  chosen  a  republican  governor,  and  republicau 
legislature.  Massachusetts  indeed  still  lags;  because  most  deeply 
involved  iu  the  parricide  crimes  and  treasons  of  the  war.  But 
her  gangrene  is  contracting,  the  sound  flesh  advancing  on  it,  and  i 
all  there  will  be  well.  I  mentioned  Connecticut  as  the  most 
hopeless  of  our  States.  Little  Delaware  had  escaped  my  atten- 
tion.    That  is  essentially  a  Q,uaker  State,  the  fragment  of  a  re- 


OoKRESPONDENCE.  g7 

ligious  sect  which,  there,  in  the  other  States,  in  England,  are 
a  homogeneous  mass,  acting  with  one  mind,  and  that  directed  by 
the  mother  society  in  England.  Dispersed,  as  the  Jews,  they 
still  form,  as  those  do,  one  nation,  foreign  to  the  land  they  Ive 
in.  They  are  Protestant  .Jesuits,  imphcitly  devoted  to  the  will 
of  their  superior,  and  forgetting  all  duties  to  their  country  in  the 
execution  of  the  policy  of  their  order.  When  war  is  proposed 
with  England,  they  have  religious  scruples ;  but  when  with 
Prance,  these  are  laid  by,  and  they  become  clamorous  for  it. 
They  are,  however,  silent,  passive,  and  give  no  other  trouble 
than  of  whipping  them  along.  Nor  is  the  election  of  Monroe  an 
inefHcient  circumstance  in  our  felicities.  Four  and  twenty  years, 
which  he  will  accomplish,  of  administration  in  republican  forms 
and  principles,  will  so  consecrate  them  in  the  eyes  of  the  people 
as  to  secure  them  against  the  danger  of  change.  The  evanition 
of  party  dissensions  has  harmonized  intercourse,  and  sweetened 
society  beyond  imagination.  The  war  then  has  done  us  all  this 
good,  and  the  further  one  of  assuring  the  world,  that  although 
attached  to  peace  from  a  sense  of  its  blessings,  we  will  meet  war 
when  it  is  made  necessary. 

I  wish  I  could  give  better  hopes  of  our  southern  brethren. 
The  achievement  of  their  independence  of  Spain  is  no  longer  o 
question.  But  it  is  a  very  serious  one,  what  will  then  become 
of  them  ?  Ignorance  and  bigotry,  like  other  insanities,  are  in- 
capable of  self-government.  They  will  fall  under  military  des- 
potism, and  become  the  murderous  tools  of  the  ambition  of  their 
respective  Bonapartes ;  and  whether  this  will  be  for  their  greater 
happiness,  the  rule  of  one  only  has  taught  you  to  judge.  No 
one,  I  hope,  can  doubt  my  wish  to  see  them  and  all  mankind  ex- 
ercising self-government,  and  capable  of  exercising  it.  But  the 
question  is  not  what  we  wish,  but  what  is  practicalile  ?  As  their 
sincere  friend  and  brother  then,  I  do  believe  the  best  thing  for 
them,  would  be  for  themselves  to  come  to  an  accord  with  Spain, 
under  the  guarantee  of  France,  Russia,  Holland,  and  the  United 
States,  allowing  to  Spain  a  nominal  supremacy,  with  authority 
only  to  keep  the  peace  among  them,  leaving  them  othe'rwise  all 


68  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

the  powers  of  self-goverment,  until  their  experience  in  them 
their  emancipation  from  their  priests,  and  advancement  in  infor- 
mation, shall  prepare  them  for  complete  independence.  1  exclude 
England  from  this  confederacy,  because  her  selfish  principles 
render  her  incapable  of  honoralile  patronage  or  disinterested  co- 
operation ;  unless,  indeed,  what  seems  now  probable,  a  revolu- 
lion  should  restore  to  her  an  honest  government,  one  which  will 
permit  the  world  to  live  in  peace.  Portugal  grasping  at  an  ex- 
tension of  her  dominion  in  the  south,  has  lost  her  great  northern 
province  of  Pernambuco,  and  I  shall  not  wonder  if  Brazil  should 
revolt  in  mass,  and  send  their  royal  family  back  to  Portugal. 
Brazil  is  more  populous,  more  wealthy,  more  energetic,  and  as 
wise  as  Portugal.  I  have  been  insensibly  led,  my  dear  friend, 
while  writing  to  you,  to  indulge  in  that  line  of  sentiment  in 
which  we  have  been  always  associated,  forgetting  that  these  are 
matters  not  belonging  to  my  time.  Not  so  with  you,  who  have 
still  many  years  to  be  a  spectator  of  these  events.  That  these 
years  may  indeed  be  many  and  happy,  is  the  sincere  prayer  of 
your  affectionate  friend. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    .TEFFERSON. 

QuiN'Cv,  May  18,  ISIT. 

Dear  Sir, — Lyman  was  mortified  that  he  could  not  visit  Monr 
ticello.  He  is  gone  to  Europe  a  second  time.  I  regret  that  he 
did  not  see  you,  he  would  have  executed  any  commission  for  you 
in  the  literary  line,  at  any  pain  or  any  expense.  I  have  many 
apprehensions  for  his  health,  which  is  very  delicate  and  preca- 
rious, but  he  is  seized  with  the  mania  of  all  our  young  clerical 
spirits  for  foreign  travel ;  I  fear  they  will  lose  more  than  they  ac- 
quire, they  will  lose  that  unadulterated  enthusiasm  for  their  na- 
tive country,  which  has  produced  the  greatest  characters  among 
us. 

Oh !  Lord !  Do  you  think  that  Protestant  Popedom  is  annihi- 
lated in  America  ?     Do  you  recollect,  or  have  you  ever  attended 


CORRESPONDENCE.  gg 

to  the  ecclesiastical  strifes  in  Maryland,  Pennsylvania,  New  York, 
and  every  part  of  New  England  ?  What  a  mercy  it  is  that  these 
people  cannot  whip,  and  crop,  and  pillory,  and  roast,  as  yet  in 
the  United  States !  If  they  could,  they  would.  Do  you  know 
the  General  of  the  Jesuits,  and  consequently  all  his  host,  have 
their  eyes  on  this  country?  Do  you  know  that  the  Church  of 
England  is  employing  more  means  and  more  art,  to  propagate 
iheir  demi-popery  among  us,  than  ever  ?  Quakers,  Anabaptists, 
Moravians,  Swedenborgians,  Methodists,  Unitarians,  Nothinga- 
rians in  all  Europe  are  employing  underhand  means  to  propagate 
their  sectarian  system  in  these  States. 

The  multitude  and  diversity  of  them,  you  will  say,  is  our  se- 
curity against  them  all.  God  grant  it.  But  if  we  consider  that 
the  Presbyterians  and  Methodists  are  far  the  most  numerous  and 
the  most  likely  to  unite,  let  a  George  Whitefield  arise,  with  a 
military  cast,  like  Mahomet  or  Loyola,  and  what  will  become  of 
all  the  other  sects  who  can  never  unite  ? 

My  friends  or  enemies  continue  to  overwhelm  me  with  books. 
Whatever  may  be  their  intention,  charitable  or  otherwise,  they 
certainly  contribute  to  continue  me  to  vegetate,  much  as  I  have 
done  for  the  sixteen  years  last  past. 

Sir  John  Malcolm's  history  of  Persia,  and  Sir  William  Jones' 
works,  are  now  poured  out  upon  me,  and  a  little  cargo  is  coming 
from  Europe.  What  can  I  do  with  all  this  learned  lumber  ?  Is 
it  necessary  to  salvation  to  investigate  all  these  Cosmogonies  and 
Mythologies  ?  Are  Bryant,  Gebelin,  Dupuis,  or  Sir  William  Jones, 
right?  What  a  frown  upon  mankind  was  the  premature. death 
of  Sir  William  Jones !  Why  could  not  Jones  and  Dupuis  have 
conversed  or  corresponded  with  each  other  ?  Had  Jones  read 
Dupuis,  or  Dupuis  Jones,  the  works  of  both  would  be  immense- 
ly improved,  though  each  would  probably  have  adhered  to  his 
system. 

I  should  admire  to  see  a  counsel  composed  of  Gebelin,  Bryant, 
Jones  and  Dupuis.  Let  them  live  together  and  compare  notes. 
The  human  race  ought  to  contribute  to  furnish  them  with  all  the 
books  in  the  Universe,  and  the  means  of  subsistence. 


70  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

I  am  not  expert  enough  in  Italian  to  read  Botta,  and  I  know 
not  that  he  has  been  translated.  Indeed,  I  have  been  so  little  sat- 
isfied with  histories  of  the  American  revolution,  that  I  have  long 
since  ceased  to  read  them.  The  truth  is  lost,  in  adulatory  panegy- 
rics, and  in  vituperary  insolence.  I  wish  you,  Mr.  Madison,  and 
Mr.  Monroe,  success  in  your  collegiate  institution.  And  I  wish 
that  superstition  in  religion,  exciting  superstition  in  politics,  and 
both  united  in  directing  military  force,  alias  glory,  may  never 
blow  up  all  your  benevolent  and  philanthropic  lucubrations.  But 
the  history  of  all  ages  is  against  you. 

It  is  said  that  no  effort  in  favor  of  virtue  is  ever  lost.  I  doubt 
whether  it  was  ever  true  ;  whether  it  is  now  true ;  but  hope  it 
will  be  true.  In  the  moral  government  of  the  world,  no  doubt 
it  was,  is,  and  ever  will  be  true ;  but  it  has  not  yet  appeared  to 
be  true  on  this  earth. 

I  am.  Sir,  sincerely  your  friend. 

P.  S.  Have  you  seen  the  Philosophy  of  Human  Nature,  and 
the  History  of  the  War  in  the  western  States,  from  Kentucky? 
How  vigorously  science  and  literature  spring  up,  as  well  as  pat- 
riotism and  heroism,  in  transalleganian  regions  ?  Have  you  seen 
Wilkinson's  history  ?  «fcc.,  &c. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFERSON. 

QuiNCY,  May  26,  1817. 

Dear  Sir, — Mr.  Leslie  Combes  of  Kentucky  has  sent  mo  a 
history  of  the  late  war,  in  the  western  country,  by  Mr.  Robert 
B.  M-SiflVe,  and  the  Philosophy  of  Human  Nature,  by  Joseph 
Buclianan.  The  history  I  am  glad  to  see,  because  it  will  pre- 
serve facts  to  the  honor  and  immortal  glory  of  the  western  people. 
Indeed,  I  am  not  sorry  that  the  Philosophy  has  been  published, 
because  it  has  been  a  maxim  with  me  for  sixty  years  at  least, 
never  to  be  afraid  of  a  book. 

Nevertheless,  I  cannot  foresee  much  utility  in  revJev-'ing,  in 


CORRESPONDENCE.  71 

this  country,  the  controversy  between  the  Spiritnahsts  and  the  Ma- 
terialists. Why  should  time  be  wasted  in  disputing  about  two 
substances,  when  both  parties  agree  that  neither  knows  anything 
about  either 

If  spirit  is  an  abstraction,  a  conjecture,  a  chimera ;  matter  is  an 
abstraction,  a  conjecture,  a  chimera  ;  for  we  know  as  much,  or 
rather  as  little,  about  one  as  the  other.  We  may  read  Cud^s-orth, 
Le  Clerc,  Leibnitz,  Berkley,  Hume,  Bolingbroke  and  Priestley,  and 
a  million  other  volumes  in  all  ages,  and  be  obliged  at  last  to  con- 
fess that  we  have  learned  nothing.  Spirit  and  matter  still  re- 
main riddles.  Define  the  terms,  however,  and  the  controversy 
is  soon  settled.  If  spirit  is  an  active  something,  and  matter  an 
inactive  something,  it  is  certain  that  one  is  not  the  other.  We 
can  no  more  conceive  that  extension,  or  solidity,  can  think,  or 
feel,  or  see,  or  hear,  or  taste,  or  smell ;  than  we  can  conceive 
that  perception,  memory,  imagination,  or  reason,  can  remove  a 
mountain,  or  blow  a  rock.  This  enigma  has  puzzled  mankind 
from  the  beginning,  and  probably  will  to  the  end.  Economy  of 
time  requires  that  we  should  waste  no  more  in  so  idle  an  amuse- 
ment. 

In  the  eleventh  discourse  of  Sir  William  Jones,  before  the 
Asiatic  Society,  vol.  iii.,  page  229,  of  his  works,  we  find  that 
Materialists  and  Immaterialists  existed  in  India,  and  that  they 
accused  each  other  of  atheism,  before  Berkley,  or  Priestley,  or 
Dupuis,  or  Plato,  or  Pythagoras,  were  born. 

Indeed,  Newton  himself  appears  to  have  discovered  nothing 
that  was  not  known  to  the  ancient  Indians.  He  has  only  fur- 
nished more  complete  demonstrations  of  the  doctrines  they  taught. 
Sir  John  Malcolm  agrees  with  Jones  and  Dupuis,  in  the  Astro- 
logical origin  of  heathen  mythologies.  Vain  man  !  mind  your 
own  business  !  Do  no  wrong ; — do  all  the  good  you  can  !  Eat 
your  canvas-back  ducks!  Drink  your  Burgundy  !  Sleep  your 
siesta  when  necessary,  and  trust  in  god  ! 

What  a  mighty  bubble,  what  a  tremendous  waterspout,  has 
Napoleon  been,  accordnig  to  his  life,  written  by  himself !  He 
says  he  was  the  creature  of  the  principlos  and  manners  of  the 


72  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS 

age  ;  by  which,  no  doubt,  he  means  the  age  of  Reason ;  the  pro- 
gress of  Manilius'  Ratio,  of  Plato's  Logos,  &c.  I  believe  him. 
A  whirlwind  raised  him,  and  a  whirlwind  blowed  him  away  to 
St.  Helena.  He  is  very  confident  that  the  age  of  Reason  is  not 
past,  and  so  am  I ;  but  I  hope  that  Reason  will  never  again 
rashly  and  hastily  create  such  creatures  as  him.  Liberty,  equal- 
ity, fraternity,  and  humanity,  will  never  again,  I  hope,  blindly 
surrender  themselves  to  an  unbounded  ambition  for  national  con- 
quests, nor  implicitly  commit  themselves  to  the  custody  and 
guardianship  of  arms  and  heroes.  If  they  do,  they  will  again 
end  in  St.  Helena,  Inquisitions,  Jesuits,  and  sacre  liqiies. 

Poor  Laureate  Southey  is  writhing  in  torments  under  the  laugh 
of  the  three  kingdoms,  all  Europe,  and  America,  upon  the  publi- 
cation of  his  "  Wat  Tyler."  I  wonder  whether  he  or  Bonaparte 
suffera  most.  I  congratulate  you,  and  Madison,  and  Monroe,  on 
your  noble  employment  in  founding  a  university.  From  such  a 
nobln  Triumvirate,  the  world  will  expect  something  very  great 
and  very  new  ;  but  if  it  contains  anything  quite  original,  and 
very  excellent,  I  fear  the  prejudices  are  too  deeply  rooted  to  suf- 
fer it  to  last  long,  though  it  may  be  accepted  at  first.  It  will  not 
always  have  three  such  colossal  reputations  to  support  it. 

The  Pernambuco  Ambassador,  his  Secretary  of  legation,  and 
private  Secretary,  respectable  people,  have  made  me  .a  visit. 
Having  been  some  year  or  two  in  a  similar  situation,  I  could  not 
but  sympathize  with  him.  As  Bonaparte  says,  the  age  of  Reason 
is  not  ended.  Nothing  can  totally  extinguish,  or  echpse  the  light 
which  has  been  shed  abroad  by  the  press. 

I  am.  Sir,  with  hearty  wishes  for  your  health  and  happiness, 
your  friend  and  humble  servant. 


TO    DOCTOB    JOHN    MANNERS. 

.Mo.M'KKI.Ul,  JlUK'   12,    1817. 

Sir, — Your  favor  of  May  20th  has  been  received  some  time 
Rince,  but  the  increasing  inertness  of  age  renders  me  slow  m 


CORRESPONDENCE.  7|j 

obeying  the  calls  of  the  writing-table,  and  less  equal  than  I  have 
been  to  its  labors. 

My  opinion  on  the  right  of  Expatriation  has  been,  so  long  ago 
as  the  year  1776,  consigned  to  record  in  the  act  of  the  Virginia 
code,  drawn  by  myself,  recognizing  the  right  expressly,  and  pre- 
scribing the  mode  of  exercising  it.  The  evidence  of  this  natural 
right,  like  that  of  our  right  to  life,  liberty,  the  use  of  our  facul- 
ties, the  pursuit  of  happiness,  is  not  left  to  the  feeble  and  sophis- 
tical investigations  of  reason,  but  is  impressed  on  the  sense  of 
every  man.  We  do  not  claim  these  under  the  charters  of  kings 
or  legislators,  but  under  the  King  of  kings.  If  he  has  made  it 
a  law  in  the  natuie  of  man  to  pursue  his  own  happiness,  he  has 
left  him  free  in  the  choice  of  place  as  well  as  mode  ;  and  we 
may  safely  call  on  the  whole  body  of  English  jurists  to  produce 
the  map  on  which  Nature  has  traced,  for  each  individual,  the 
geographical  line  which  she  forbids  him  to  cross  in  pursuit  of 
happiness.  It  certainly  does  not  exist  in  his  mind.  Where, 
then,  is  it?  I  believe,  too,  I  might  safely  affirm,  that  there  is 
not  another  nation,  civilized  or  savage,  which  has  ever  denied 
this  natural  right.  I  doubt  if  there  is  another  which  refuses  its 
exercise.  I  know  it  is  allowed  in  some  of  the  most  respectable 
countries  of  continental  Europe,  nor  have  I  ever  heard  of  one  in 
which  it  was  not.  How  it  is  among  our  savage  neighbor*,  who 
have  no  law  but  that  of  Nature,  we  all  know. 

Though  long  estranged  from  legal  reading  and  reasoning,  and 
little  familiar  with  the  decisions  of  particular  judges,  I  have  con- 
sidered that  respecting  the  obligation  of  the  common  law  in  this 
country  as  a  very  plain  one,  and  merely  a  question  of  document. 
If  we  are  under  that  law,  the  document  which  made  us  so  can 
surely  be  produced ;  and  as  far  as  this  can  be  produced,  so  far  we 
^re  subject  to  it,  and  farther  we  are  not.  Most  of  the  States  did, 
1  believe,  at  an  early  period  of  their  legislation,  adopt  the  English 
l-aw,  common  and  statute,  more  or  less  in  a  body,  as  far  as  locali- 
ties admitted  of  their  application.  In  these  States,  then,  the 
common  law,  so  far  as  adopted,  is  the  lex-loci.  Then  comes  the 
law  of  Congress,  declaring  that  what  is  law  in  any  State,  shall 


74  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

be  the  rule  of  decision  in  their  courts,  as  to  matters  arising  within 
that  State,  except  when  controlled  by  their  own  statutes.  But 
this  law  of  Congress  has  been  considered  as  extending  to  civil 
eases  only ;  and  that  no  such  provision  has  been  made  for  crim- 
inal ones.  A  similar  provision,  then,  for  criminal  offences,  would, 
in  like  manner,  be  an  adoption  of  more  or  less  of  the  common 
law,  as  part  of  the  lex-loci,  where  the  offence  is  committed  ;  and 
would  cover  the  whole  field  of  legislation  for  the  general  gov- 
ernment. I  have  turned  to  the  passage  you  refer  to  in  Judge 
Cooper's  Justinian,  and  should  suppose  the  general  expressions 
there  used  would  admit  of  modifications  conformable  to  this  doc- 
trine. It  would  alarm  me  indeed,  in  any  case,  to  find  myself 
entertaining  an  opinion  different  from  that  of  a  judgment  so  ac- 
curately organized  as  his.  But  I  am  quite  persuaded  that,  when- 
ever Judge  Cooper  shall  be  led  to  consider  that  question  simply 
and  nakedly,  it  is  so  much  within  his  course  of  thinking,  as 
liberal  as  logical,  that,  rejecting  all  blind  and  undefined  obliga- 
tion, he  will  hold  to  the  positive  and  explicit  precepts  of  the  law 
alone.  Accept  these  hasty  sentiments  on  the  subjects  you  pro- 
pose, as  hazarded  in  proof  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    BARON    HUMBOLDT. 

MoNTioELLo,  June  IS,  1817. 

Dear  Sir, — The  receipt  of  your  Distributio  Geographica 
Plaatarum,  with  the  duty  of  thanking  you  for  a  work  which 
sheds  so  much  new  and  valuable  light  on  botanical  science,  ex- 
cites the  desire,  also,  of  presenting  myself  to  your  recollection, 
and  of  expressing  to  you  those  sentiments  of  high  admiration 
and  esteem,  which,  although  long  silent,  have  never  slept.  The- 
physical  information  you  have  given  us  of  a  country  hitherto  so 
shamefully  unknown,  has  come  exactly  in  time  to  guide  our  un- 
derstandings in  the  great  political  revolution  now  bringing  it  into 
prominence  on  the  stage  of  the  world.  The  issue  of  its  strug- 
gles, as  they  respect  Spain,  is  no  longer  matter  of  doubt.     Ab  it 


COERESPONDENOE.  75 

respects  their  own  liberty,  peace  and  happiness,  we  cannot  be 
quite  so  certain.  Whether  the  blinds  of  bigotry,  the  shackles 
of  the  priesthood,  and  the  fascinating  glare  of  rank  and  wealth, 
give  fair  play  to  the  common  sense  of  the  mass  of  their  people,  so 
far  ds  to  qualify  them  for  self-government,  is  what  we  do  not 
know.  Perhaps  our  wishes  may  be  stronger  than  our  hopes. 
The  first  principle  of  republicanism  is,  that  the  lex-majoris  partis 
is  the  fLUidamental  law  of  every  society  of  individuals  of  equal 
rights;  to  consider  the  will  of  the  society  enounced  by  the  ma- 
jority of  a  single  vote,  as  sacred  as  if  unanimous,  is  the  first  of 
all  lessons  in  importance,  yet  the  last  which  is  thoroughly  learnt. 
This  law  once  disregarded,  no  other  remains  but  that  of  force, 
which  ends  necessarily  in  military  despotism.  This  has  been 
the  history  of  the  French  revolution,  and  I  wish  the  understand- 
ing of  our  Southern  brethren  may  be  sufficiently  enlarged  and 
firm  to  see  that  their  fate  depends  on  its  sacred  observance. 

In  our  America  we  are  turning  to  public  improvements. 
Schools,  roads,  and  canals,  are  everywhere  -either  in  operation  or 
contemplation.  The  most  gigantic  undertaking  yet  proposed,  is 
that  of  New  York,  for  drawing  the  waters  of  Lake  Erie  into  the 
Hudson.  The  distance  is  353  miles,  and  the  height  to  be  sur- 
mounted 661  feet.  The  expense  will  be  great,  bat  its  effect  in- 
calculably powerful  in  favor  of  the  Atlantic  States.  Internal 
navigation  by  steamboats  is  rapidly  spreading  through  all  our 
States,  and  that  by  sails  and  oars  will  ere  long  be  looked  back  to 
as  among  the  curiosities  of  antiquity.  We  count  much,  too,  on 
its  efiicacy  for  harbor  defence  ;  and  it  will  soon  be  tried  for  nav- 
igation by  sea.  We  consider  the  employment  of  the  contribu- 
tions which  our  citizens  can  spare,  after  feeding,  and  clothing, 
and  lodging  themselves  comfortably,  as  more  useful,  more  moral, 
and  even  more  splendid,  than  that  preferred  by  Europe,  of  de- 
stroying human  life,  labor  and  happiness. 

I  write  this  letter  without  knowing  where  it  will  find  you. 
But  wherever  that  may  be,  I  am  sure  it  will  find  you  engaged  in 
something  instructive  for  man.  If  at  Paris,  you  are  of  course  in 
habits  of  society  with  Mi'.  Gallatin,  our  worthy,  oui-  able,  and  ex- 


76  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

cellent  minister,  who  will  give  you,  from  time  to  time,  the  de- 
tails of  the  progress  of  a  country  in  whose  prosperity  you  are  so 
good  as  to  feel  an  interest,  and  in  which  your  name  is  revered 
among  those  of  the  great  worthies  of  the  world.  God  bless  you, 
and  preserve  you  long  to  enjoy  the  gratitude  of  your  fellow  men, 
and  to  be  blessed  with  honors,  health  and  happiness. 


TO    M.    DE    MAEBOIS. 

MoNTicKLLO,  June  14,  1817. 

I  thank  you,  dear  Sir,  for  the  copy  of  the  interesting  narrative 
of  the  Complet  d'Arnold,  which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to 
send  me.  It  throws  light  on  that  incident  of  history  which  we 
did  not  possess  before.  An  incident  which  merits  to  be  known, 
as  a  lesson  to  mankind,  in  all  its  details.  This  mark  of  your 
attention  recalls  to  my  mind  the  earlier  period  of  life  a-t  which  I 
had  the  pleasure  of  your  personal  acquaintance,  and  renews  the 
sentiments  of  high  respect  and  esteem  with  which  that  acquaint- 
ance inspired  me.  I  had  not  failed  to  accompany  your  personal 
sufferings  during  the  civil  convulsions  of  your  country,  and  had 
sincerely  sympathized  with  them.  An  awful  period,  indeed,  has 
passed  in  Europe  since  our  first  acquaintance.  When  I  left 
France  at  the  close  of  '89,  your  revolution  was,  as  I  thought, 
under  the  direction  of  able  and  honest  men.  But  the  madness 
of  some  of  their  successors,  the  vices  of  others,  the  malicious  in- 
trigues of  an  envious  and  corrupting  neighbor,  the  tracasserie  of 
the  Directory,  the  usurpations,  the  havoc,  and  devastations  of 
your  Attila,  and  the  equal  usurpations,  depredations  and  oppress- 
ions cf  your  hypocritical  deliverers,  will  form  a  mournful  period 
in  the  history  of  man,  a  period  of  which  the  last  chapter  will 
not  be  seen  in  your  day  or  mine,  and  one  which  I  still  fear  is 
to  be  written  in  characters  of  blood.  Had  Bonaparte  reflected 
that  such  is  the  moral  construction  of  the  world,  that  no  national 
crime  passes  unpunished  in  the  long  run,  he  would  not  now  be 
in  the  cage  of  St.  Helena ;  and  were  your  present  oppressors  to 


C0REE8P0NDENCE.  77 

reflect  on  the  same  truth,  they  would  spare  to  their  own  countries 
the  penaUies  on  their  present  wrongs  which  will  be  inflicted  on 
Ihem  on  future  times.  The  seeds  of  hatred  and  revenge  which 
they  are  now  sowing  with  a  large  hand,  will  not  fail  to  produce 
their  fruits  in  time.  Like  their  brother  robbers  on  the  highway, 
they  suppose  the  escape  of  the  moment  a  final  escape,  and  deem 
infamy  and  future  risk  countervailed  by  present  gain.  Oar  lot 
has  been  happier.  When  you  witnessed  our  first  struggles  in 
the  war  of  independence,  you  little  calculated,  more  than  we 
did,  on  the  rapid  growth  and  prosperity  of  this  country ;  on  the 
practical  demonstration  it  was  about  to  exhibit,  of  the  happy 
truth  that  man  is  capable  of  self-government,  and  only  rendered 
otherwise  by  the  moral  degradation  designedly  superinduced  on 
him  by  the  wicked  acts  of  his  tyrants. 

I  have  much  confidence  that  we  shall  proceed  successfully  for 
ages  to  come,  and  that,  contrary  to  the  principle  of  Montesquieu, 
it  will  be  seen  that  the  larger  the  extent  of  country,  the  more  firm 
its  republican  structure,  if  founded,  not  on  conquest,  but  in  princi- 
ples of  compact  and  equality.  My  hope  of  its  duration  is  built 
much  on  the  enlargement  of  the  resources  of  life  going  hand  in 
hand  with  the  enlargement  of  territory,  and  the  belief  that  men  are 
disposed  to  live  honestly,  if  the  means  of  doing  so  are  open  to  them. 
With  the  consolation  of  this  belief  in  the  future  result  of  our  labors. 
I  have  that  of  other  prophets  who  foretell  distant  events,  that  I 
shall  not  live  to  see  it  falsified.  My  theory  nas  always  been. 
that  if  we  are  to  dream,  the  flatteries  of  hope  are  as  cheap,  and 
pleasanter  than  the  gloom  of  despair.  I  wish  to  yourself  a  long 
life  of  honors,  health  and  happiness. 


TO   AIUBERT  GALLATIN 

MoNTioELLO,  June  10,  1817. 


Dear  Sir, — The  importance  that  the  enclosed  letters  .should 
safely  reach  their  destination,  impels  me  to  avail  myself  of  the 
protection  of  your  cover.     This  is  an  inconvenience  to  which 


78  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

your  situation  exposes  you,  while  it  adds  to  the  opportunities  of 
exercising  yourself  in  works  of  charity. 

According  to  the  opinion  I  hazarded  to  you  a  little  before  yout 
departure,  we  have  had  almost  an  entire  change  in  the  body  of 
Congress.  The  unpopularity  of  the  compensation  law  was  com- 
pleted, by  the  manner  of  repealing  it  as  to  all  the  world  except 
themselves.  In  some  States,  it  is  said,  every  member  is  changed  ; 
in  all,  many.  What  opposition  there  was  to  the  original  law. 
was  chiefly  from  southern  members.  Yet  many  of  those  have 
been  left  out,  because  they  received  the  advanced  wages.  I 
have  never  known  so  unanimous  a  sentiment  of  disapprobation  ; 
and  what  is  remarkable  is,  that  it  was  spontaneous.  The  news- 
papers were  almost  entirely  silent,  and  the  people  not  only  unled 
by  their  leaders,  but  in  opposition  to  them.  I  confess  I  was 
highly  pleased  with  this  proof  of  the  innate  good  sense,  the  vigi- 
lance, and  the  determination  of  the  people  to  act  for  them- 
selves. 

Among  the  laws  of  the  late  Congress,  some  were  of  note  ;  a 
navigation  act,  particularly,  applicable  to  those  nations  only  who 
have  navigation  acts  ;  pinching  one  of  them  especially,  not  only 
in  the  general  way,  but  in  the  intercourse  with  her  foreign  pos- 
sessions. This  part  may  re-act  on  us,  and  it  remains  for  trial 
which  may  bear  longest.  A  law  respecting  our  conduct  as  a 
neutral  between  Spain  and  her  contending  colonies,  was  passed 
by  a  majority  of  one  only,  I  believe,  and  against  the  very  general 
sentiment  of  our  country.  It  is  thought  to  strain  our  complais- 
ance to  Spain  beyond  her  right  or  merit,  and  almost  against  the 
right  of  the  other  party,  and  certainly  against  the  claims  they 
have  to  our  good  wishes  and  neighborly  relations.  That  we 
should  wish  to  see  the  people  of  other  countries  free,  is  as  nat'iral, 
and  at  least  as  justifiable,  as  that  one  King  should  wish  to  see  the 
Kings  of  other  countries  maintained  in  their  despotism.  Right 
to  both  parties,  innocent  favor  to  the  juster  cause,  is  our  proper 
sentiment. 

You  will  have  learned  that  an  act  for  internal  improvement, 
after  passing  both  Houses,  was  negatived  by  the  President.    The 


(  ORRESPONDENOE.  79 

act  was  founded,  avowedly,  on  the  principle  that  the  phrase  in 
the  constitution  which  authorizes  Congress  "  to  lay  taxes,  to  pay 
the  debts  and  provide  for  the  general  welfare,"  was  an  extension 
of  the  powers  specifically  enumerated  to  whatever  would  promote 
the  general  welfare ;  and  this,  you  know,  was  the  federal  doc- 
trine. Whereas,  our  tenet  ever  was,  and,  indeed,  it  is  almost  the 
only  landmark  which  now  divides  the  federalists  from  the  re- 
publicans, that  Congress  had  not  unlimited  powers  to  provide  for 
the  general  welfare,  but  were  restrained  to  those  specifically  enu- 
merated ;  and  that,  as  it  was  never  meant  they  should  provide 
for  that  welfare  but  by  the  exercise  of  the  enumerated  powers, 
so  it  could  not  have  been  meant  they  should  raise  money  for  pur- 
poses which  the  enumeration  did  not  place  under  their  action  ; 
consequently,  that  the  specification  of  powers  is  a  limitation  of 
the  purposes  for  which  they  may  raise  money.  I  think  the  pas- 
sage and  rejection  of  this  bill  a  fortunate  incident.  Every  State 
will  certainly  concede  the  power  ;  and  this  will  be  a  national 
confirmation  of  the  grounds  of  appeal  to  them,  and  will  settle 
forever  the  meaning  of  this  phrase,  which,  by  a  mere  grammati- 
cal quibble,  has  countenanced  the  General  Government  in  a 
claim  of  universal  power.  For  in  the  phrase,  "  to  lay  taxes,  to 
pay  the  debts  and  provide  for  the  general  welfare,"  it  is  a  mere 
question  of  syntax,  whether  the  two  last  infinitives  are  governed 
by  the  first  or  are  distinct  and  co-ordinate  powers  ;  a  question 
unequivocally  decided  by  the  exact  definition  of  powers  imme- 
diately following.  It  is  fortunate  for  another  reason,  as  the 
States,  in  conceding  the  power,  will  modify  it,  either  by  requir- 
ing the  federal  ratio  of  expense  in  each  State,  or  otherwise,  so 
as  to  secure  us  against  its  partial  exercise.  Without  this  caution, 
intrigue,  negotiation,  and  the  barter  of  votes  might  become  as 
habitual  in  Congress,  as  they  are  in  those  legislatures  which  have 
the  appointment  of  officers,  and  which,  with  us,  is  called  "  log- 
ging," the  term  of  the  farmers  for  their  .exchanges  of  aid  in  roll- 
ing together  the  logs  of  their  newly-cleared  grounds.  Three  of 
our  papers  have  presented  us  the  copy  of  an  act  of  the  legislature 
of  New  York,  which,  if  it  has  really  passed,  will  carry  us  back 


80  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

to  the  times  of  the  darkest  bigotry  and  barbarism,  to  find  a  paral 
lei.  Its  purport  is,  that  all  those  who  shall  hereafter  join  in 
communion  \yith  the  religious  sect  of  Shaking  Q,uakers,  shall  be 
deemed  civilly  dead,  their  marriages  dissolved,  and  all  their  chil- 
dren and  property  taken  out  of  their  hands.  This  act  being  pub- 
lished nakedly  in  the  papers,  without  the  usual  signatures,  or  any 
history  of  the  circumstances  of  its  passage,  I  am  not  without  a 
hope  it  may  have  been  a  mere  abortive  attempt.  It  contrasts 
singularly  with  a  cotemporary  vote  of  the  Pennsylvania  legisla- 
ture, who,  on  a  proposition  to  make  the  belief  in  God  a  neces- 
sary qualification  for  oflice,  rejected  it  by  a  great  majority,  al- 
though assuredly  there  was  not  a  single  atheist  in  their  body. 
And  you  remember  to  have  heard,  that  when  the  act  for  religious 
freedom  was  before  the  Virginia  Assembly,  a  motion  to  insert  the 
name  of  Jesus  Christ  before  the  phrase,  "  the  author  of  our  holy 
religion,"  which  stood  in  the  bill,  was  rejected,  although  that 
was  the  creed  of  a  great  majority  of  them. 

I  have  been  charmed  to  see  that  a  Presidential  election  now 
produces  scarcely  any  agitation.  On  Mr.  Madison's  election  there 
was  little,  on  Monroe's  all  but  none.  In  Mr.  Adams'  time  and 
mine,  parties  were  so  nearly  balanced  as  to  make  the  struggle 
fearful  for  our  peace.  But  since  the  decided  ascendency  of  the 
republican  body,  federalism  has  looked  on  with  silent  but  unre- 
sisting anguish.  In  the  middle,  southern  and  western  States,  it 
is  as  low  as  it  ever  can  be  ;  for  nature  has  made  some  men  mon- 
archists and  tories  by   their  constitution,  and   some,  of  course, 

there  always  will  be. 

#*  *#  **#  ### 

We  have  had  a  remarkably  cold  winter.  At  Hallowell,  in 
Maine,  the  mercury  was  at  thirty-four  degrees  below  zero,  of 
Fahrenheit,  which  is  sixteen  degrees  lower  than  it  was  in  Paris  in 
1788-9.  Here  it  was  at  six  degrees  above  zero,  which  is  our 
greatest  degree  of  cold.  , 

Present  me  respectfully  to  Mrs.  Gallatin,  and  be  assured  of  my 
constant  and  aifectionate  friendship. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  81 


TO    MR.    ADAMS. 

Poplar  Forest,  September  8,  1817. 

Dear  Sir, — A  month's  absence  from  Monticello  has  added  to 
the  delay  of  acknowledging  your  last  letters,  and  indeed  for  a 
month  before  I  left  it,  our  projected  college  gave  me  constant 
employment ;  for,  being  the  only  visitor  in  its  immediate  neigh- 
borhood, all  its  administrative  business  falls  on  me,  and  that, 
where  building  is  going  on,  is  not  a  little.  In  yours  of  July 
15th,  i^ou  express  a  wish  to  see  our  plan,  but  the  present  visitors 
have  sanctioned  no  plan  as  yet.  Our  predecessors,  the  first  trus- 
tees, had  desired  me  to  propose  one  to  them,  and  it  was  on  that 
occasion  I  asked  and  received  the  benefit  of  your  ideas  on  the 
subject.  Digesting  these  with  such  other  schemes  as  I  had  been 
able  to  collect,  I  made  out  a  prospectus,  the  looser  and  less  satis- 
factory from  the  uncertain  amount  of  the  funds  to  which  it  was 
to  be  adapted.  This  I  addressed,  in  the  form  of  a  letter,  to  their 
President,  Peter  Carr,  which,  going  before  the  legislature  when 
a  change  in  the  constitution  of  the  college  was  asked,  got  into 
the  public  papers,  and,  among  others,  I  think  you  will  find  it  in 
Niles'  Register,  in  the  early  part  of  1815.  This,  however,  is  to 
be  considered  but  as  a  premiere  ebauche,  for  the  consideration 
and  amendment  of  the  present  visitors,  and  to  be  accommodated 
to  one  of  two  conditions  of  things.  If  the  institution  is  to  de- 
pend on  private  donations  alone,  we  shall  be  forced  to  accumu- 
late on  the  shoulders  of  four  professors  a  mass  of  sciences  which, 
if  the  legislature  adopts  it,  should  be  distributed  among  ten.  We 
shall  be  ready  for  a  professor  of  languages  in  April  next,  for  two 
others  the  following  year,  and  a  fourth  a  year  after.  How  happy 
should  we  be  if  wc  could  have  a  Ticknor  for  our  first.  A  crit- 
ical classic  is  scarcely  to  be  found  in  the  United  States.  To  this 
professor,  a  fixed  salary  of  five  hundred  dollars,  with  liberal  tui- 
tion fees  from  the  pupils,  will  probably  give  two  thousand  dollars 
a  year.  We  are  now  on  the  look-out  for  a  professor,  meaning  to 
accept  of  none  but  of  the  very  first  order. 

You  ask  if  I  have  seen  Buchanan's,  McAfee's,  or  Wilkinson's 

VOL.  VII.  6 


82  -  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

books  ?  I  have  seen  none  of  them,  but  have  lately  read,  with 
great  pleasure,  Reid  &  Eaton's  life  of  Jackson,  if  life  may  be 
called  what  is  merely  a  history  of  his  campaign  of  1814.  Reid's 
part  is  well  written.  Eaton's  continuation  is  better  for  its  matter 
than  style.     The  whole,  however,  is  valuable. 

I  have  lately  received  a  pamphlet  of  extreme  interest  from 
France.  It  is  De  Pradt's  Historical  Recital  of  the  first  return  of 
Louis  XVIII.  to  Paris.  It  is  precious  for  the  minutias  of  the  pro- 
ceedings which  it  details,  and  for  their  authenticity,  as  from  an 
eye-witness.  Being  but  a  pamphlet  I  enclose  it  for  your  perusal, 
assured,  if  you  have  not  seen  it,  that  it  will  give  you  pleasure. 
I  will  ask  its  return,  because  I  value  it  as  a  morsel  of  genuine 
history,  a  thing  so  rare  as  to  be  always  valuable.  I  have  received 
some  information  from  an  eye-witness  also  of  what  passed  on  the 
occasion  of  the  second  return  of  Louis  XYIII.  The  Emperor 
Alexander,  it  seems,  was  solidly  opposed  to  this.  In  the  consul- 
tation of  the  allied  sovereigns  and  their  representatives  with  the 
executive  council  at  Paris,  he  insisted  that  the  Bourbons  were 
too  incapable  and  unworthy  of  being  placed  at  the  head  of  the 
nation  ;  declared  he  would  support  any  other  choice  they  should 
freely  make,  and  continued  to  urge  most  strenuously  that  some 
other  choice  should  be  made.  The  debates  ran  high  and  warm, 
and  broke  oif  after  midnight,  every  one  retaining  his  own  opin- 
ion. He  lodged,  as  you  know,  at  Talleyrand's.  When  thej''  re- 
turned into  council  the  next  day,  his  host  had  overcome  his  firm- 
ness. Louis  XVIII.  was  accepted,  and  through  the  management 
of  Talleyrand,  accepted  without  any  capitulation,  although  the 
sovereigns  would  have  consented  that  he  should  be  first  required 
to  subscribe  and  swear  to  the  constitution  prepared,  before  per- 
mission to  enter  the  kingdom.  It  would  seem  as  if  Talleyrand 
had  been  afraid  to  admit  the  smallest  interval  of  time,  lest  a 
change  of  mind  would  bring  back  Bonaparte  on  them.  But  I 
observe  that  the  friends  of  a  limited  monarchy  there  consider  the 
popular  representation  as  much  improved  by  the  late  alteration, 
and  confident  it  will  in  the  end  produce  a  fixed  government  in 


CORRESPONDEKOE.  gg 

which  an  elective  body,  fairly  representative  of  the  people,  will 
be  an  efficient  element. 

I  congratulate  Mrs.  Adams  and  yourself  on  the  return  of  your 
excellent  and  distinguished  son,  and  our  country  still  more  on 
such  a  minister  of  their  foreign  affairs ;  and  I  renew  to  both  the 
assurance  of  my  high  and  friendly  respect  and  esteem. 


TO    GEOEGE    FLOWER. 

Poi'LAR  FoRRST,  September  12,  1817. 

Dear' Sir, — Your  favor  of  August  12th  was  yesterday  re- 
ceived at  this  place,  and  I  learn  from  it  with  pleasure  that  you 
have  found  a  tract  of  country  which  will  suit  you  for  settlement. 
To  us  your  first  purchase  would  have  been  more  gratifying,  by 
adding  yourself  and  your  friends  to  our  society  ;  but  the  over- 
ruling consideration,  with  us  as  with  you,  is  your  own  advantage, 
and  as  it  would  doubtless  be  a  great  comfort  to  you  to  have  your 
ancient  neighbors  and  friends  settled  around  you.  I  sincerely  wish 
that  your  proposition  to  "purchase  a  tract  of  land  in  the  Illinois 
on  favorable  terms,  for  introducing  a  colony  of  English  farm- 
ers," may  encounter  no  difficulties  from  the  established  rules  of 
our  land  department.  The  general  law  prescribes  an  open  sale, 
where  all  citizens  may  compete  on  an  equal  footing  for  any  lot 
of  land  which  attracts  their  choice.  To  dispense  with  this  in 
any  particular  case,  requires  a  special  law  of  Congress,  and  to 
special  legislation  we  are  generally  averse,  lest  a  principle  of  fa- 
vpritism  should  creep  in  and  pervert  that  of  equal  rights.  It 
has,  however,  been  done  on  some  occasions  where  a  special  na- 
tional advantage  has  been  expected  to  overweigh  that  of  adher- 
ence to  the  general  rule.  The  promised  introduction  of  the  cul- 
ture of  the  vine  procured  a  special  law  in  favor  of  the  Swiss  set- 
tlement on  the  Ohio.  That  of  the  culture  of  oil,  wine  and  other 
southern  productions,  did  the  same  lately  for  the  French  settle- 
ment on  the  Tombigbee.  It  remains  to  be  tried  whether  that 
of  an  improved  system  of  farming,  interesting  to  so  great  a  pro- 


64  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

portion  of  our  citizens,  may  not  also  be  thought  worth  a  dispen- 
sation with  the  general  rule.  This  I  suppose  is  the  principal 
iground  on  which  your  proposition  will  be  questioned.  For  al- 
though as  to  other  foreigners  it  is  thought  better  to  discourage 
their  settling  together  in  large  masses,  wherein,  as  in  our  German 
settlements,  they  preserve  for  a  long  time  their  own  languages, 
habits,  and  principles  of  government,  and  that  they  should  dis- 
tribute themselves  sparsely  among  the  natives  for  quicker  amalga- 
mation. Yet  English  emigrants  are  without  this  inconvenience. 
They  differ  from  us  little  .  but  in  their  principles  of  government, 
and  most  of  those  (merchants  excepted)  who  come  here,  are  suffi- 
ciently disposed  to  adopt  ours.  What  the  issue,  however,  of 
your  proposition  may  probably  be,  I  am  less  able  to  advise  you 
than  many  others ;  for  during  the  last  eight  or  ten  years  I  have 
no  knowledge  of  the  administration  of  the  land  office  or  the  prin- 
ciples of  its  government.  Even  the  persons  on  whom  it  will  de- 
pend are  all  changed  within  that  interval,  so  as  to  leave  me  small 
means  of  being  useful  to  you.  Whatever  they  may  be,  how- 
ever, they  shall  be  freely  exercised  for  your  advantage,  and  that, 
not  on  the  selfish  principle  of  increasing  our  own  population  at 
the  expense  of  other  nations,  for  the  additions  to  that  from  emi- 
gration are  but  as  a  drop  in  a  bucket  to  those  by  natural  procrea- 
tion, but  to  consecrate  a  sanctuary  for  those  whom  the  misrule 
of  Europe  may  compel  to  seek  happiness  in  other  climes.  This 
refuge  once  known  will  produce  reaction  on  the  happiness  even 
of  those  who  remain  there,  by  warning  their  task-masters  that 
when  the  evils  of  Egyptian  oppression  become  heavier  than  those 
of  the  abandonment  of  country,  another  Canaan  is  open  where 
their  subjects  will  be  received  as  brothers,  and  secured  against 
like  oppressions  by  a  participation  in  the  right  of  self-govern* 
ment.  If  additional  motives  could  be  wanting  with  us  to  the 
maintenance  of  this  right,  they  would  be  found  in  the  animating 
consideration  that  a  single  good  government  becomes  thus  a 
blessing  to  the  whole  earth,  its  welcome  to  the  oppressed  restrain- 
iaig  within  certain  limits  the  measure  of  their  oppressions.  But 
should  even  this  be  counteracted  by  violence  on  the  right  of  ex- 


CORRESPONDENCE  85 

patriation,  the  other  branch  of  our  example  then  presents  itself 
for  imitation,  to  rise  on  their  rulers  and  do  as  we  have  done. 
You  have  set  to  your  own  country  a  good  example,  by  showing 
them  a  peaceable  mode  of  reducing  their  rulers  to  the  necessity 
of  becoming  more  wise,  more  moderate,  and  more  honest,  and  I 
sincerely  pray  that  the  example  may  work  for  the  benefit  of  those 
who  cannot  follow  it,  as  it  will  for  your  own. 

With  Mr.  Burckbeck,  the  associate  of  your  late  explanatory 
journeying,  I  have  not  the  happiness  of  personal  acquaintance  ; 
but  I  know  him  through  his  narrative  of  your  journeyings  to- 
gether through  France.  The  impressions  received  from  that, 
give  me  confidence  that  a  participation  with  yourself  in  assur- 
ances of  the  esteem  and  respect  of  a  stranger  will  not  be  unac- 
ceptable to  him,  and  the  less  when  given  through  you  and  asso- 
ciated with  those  to  yourself. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFEBSON. 

QuiNcv,  October  in,  1817. 

Dear  Sir, — I  thank  you  for  your  kind  congratulations  on  the 
return  of  my  little  family  from  Europe.  To  receive  them  all  in 
fine  health  and  good  spirits,  after  so  long  an  absence,  was  a  great- 
er blessing  than  at  my  time  of  Hfe  when  they  went  away,  I  had 
any  right  to  hope,  or  reason  to  expect. 

If  the  Secretary  of  State  can  give  satisfaction  to  his  fellow- 
citizens  in  his  new  office,  it  will  be  a  source  of  consolation  to  me 
while  I  live ;  although  it  is  not  probable  that  I  shall  long  be  a 
witness  of  his  good  success,  or  ill  success.  I  shall  soon  be  obliged 
to  say  to  him,  and  to  you,  and  to  your  country  and  mine,  God 
bless  you  all !  Fare-thee-well !  Indeed,  I  need  not  wait  a  mo- 
ment. I  can  say  all  that  now,  with  as  good  a  will,  and  as  clear 
a  conscience,  as  at  any  time  past,  or  future. 

I  thank  you,  also,  for  the  loan  of  De  Pradt's  narration  of  the 
intrigues,  at  the  second  restoration  of  the  Bourbons.  In  this,  as 
in  many  other  instances,  is  seen  the  influence  of  a  single  subtle 


86  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

mind,  and  a  trifling  accident,  in  deciding  the  fate  of  mankind  for 
iges.     De  Pradt  and  Talleyrand  were  well  associated. 

I  have  ventured  to  send  the  pamphlet  to  Washington  with  a 
charge  to  return  it  to  you.  The  French  have  a  King,  a  cham- 
ber of  Peers,  and  a  chamber  of  Deputies.  Voila  !  les  ossimens 
of  a  constitution  of  a  limited  monarchy ;  and  of  a  good  one,  pro- 
vided the  bones  are  united  by  good  joints,  and  knitted  together 
by  strong  tendons.  But  where  does  the  sovereignty  reside  ? 
Are  the  three  branches  sufficiently  defined  ?  A  fair  representa- 
tion of  the  body  of  the  people  by  elections,  sufficiently  frequent, 
is  essential  to  a  free  government ;  but  if  the  Commons  cannot 
make  themselves  respected  by  the  Peers,  and  the  King,  they  can 
do  no  good,  nor  prevent  any  evil. 

Can  any  organization  of  government  secure  public  and  private 
liberty  without  a  general  or  universal  freedom,  without  license, 
or  licentiousness  of  thinking,  speaking,  and  writing.  Have  the 
French  such  freedom  ?     Will  their  religion,  or  policy,  allow  it  ? 

When  I  think  of  liberty,  and  a  free  government,  in  an  ancient, 
opulent,  populous,  and  commercial  empire,  I  fear  I  shall  always 
recollect  a  fable  of  Plato. 

Love  is  a  son  of  the  god  of  riches,  and  the  goddess  of  poverty. 
He  inherits  from  his  father  the  intrepidity  of  his  courage,  the 
enthusiasm  of  his  thoughts,  his  generosity,  his  prodigality,  his 
confidence  in  himself,  the  opinion  of  his  own  merit,  the  impa- 
tience to  have  always  the  preference  ;  but  he  derives  from  his 
mother  that  indigence  which  makes  him  always  a  beggar ;  that 
importunity  with  which  he  demands  everything;  that  timidity 
which  sometimes  hinders  him  from  daring  to  ask  anything ;  that 
disposition  which  he  has  to  servitude,  and  that  dread  of  being 
despised,  which  he  can  never  overcome. 

Such  is  Love  according  to  Plato.  Who  calls  him  a  demon? 
And  such  is  liberty  in  France,  and  England,  and  all  other  great, 
rich,  old,  corrunted  commercial  nations.  The  opposite  qualities 
of  the  father  and  mother  are  perpetually  tearing  to  pieces  himself 
and  his  friends  as  well  as  his  enemies. 

Mr.  Monroe  has  got  the  universal  character  among  all  our  com- 


OORRESPONDEKOE.  87 

mon  people  of  "  A  very  smart  man."  And  veiily  I  am  of  the 
same  mind.  I  know  not  another  who  could  have  executed  so 
great  a  plan  so  cleverly. 

I  wish  him  the  same  happy  success  through  his  whole  admin- 
istration. 

I  am,  Sir,  with  respest  and  friendship,  yours,  J.  A. 


TO  THE  HONORABLE  JOHN  q.  ADAMS. 

MoNTjcELLo,  November  1,  181*7, 

Deak  Sir, — Yours  of  the  4th  of  October  was  not  received  here 
until  the  20th,  having  been  sixteen  days  on  its  passage  ;  since 
which  unavoidable  avocations  have  made  this  the  first  moment  it 
has  been  in  my  power  to  acknowledge  its  receipt.  Of  the  char- 
acter of  M.  de  Pradt  his  political  writings  famish  a  tolerable  es- 
timate, but  not  so  full  as  you  have  favored  me  with.  He  is  elo- 
quent, and  his  pamphlet  on  colonies  shows  him  ingenious.  I 
was  gratified  by  his  Recit  Historique,  because,  pretending,  as  all 
men  do,  to  some  character,  and  he  to  one  of  some  distinction,  I 
supposed  he  would  not  place  before  the  world  facts  of  glaring 
falsehood,  on  which  so  many  living  and  distinguished  witnesses 
could  convict  him.  We,  too,  who  are  retired  from  the  business 
of  the  world,  are  glad  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  truth,  here  and  there 
as  we  can,  to  guide  our  path  through  the  boundless  field  of  fable 
in  which  we  are  bewildered  by  public  prints,  and  even  by  those 
calling  themselves  histories.  A  word  of  truth  to  us  is  like  the 
drop  of  water  supplicated  from  the  tip  of  Lazarus'  finger.  It  is 
as  an  observation  of  latitude  and  longitude  to  the  mariner  long 
enveloped  in  clouds,  for  correcting  the  ship's  way. 

On  the  subject  of  weights  and  measures,  yon  will  have,  at  its 
threshold,  to  encounter  the  question  on  which  Solon  and  Ly- 
curgus  acted  difi'erently.  Shall  we  mould  our  citizens  to  the 
law,  or  the  law  to  our  citizens?  And  in  solving  this  question 
their  peculiar  character  is  an  element  not  to  be  neglected.  Of 
the  two  only  things  in  nature  which   can  furnish   an  invariable 


88  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Standard,  to  wit,  the  dimensions  of  the  globe  itself,  and  the  time 
of  its  diurnal  revolution  on  its  axis,  it  is  not  perhaps  of  much 
importance  which  we  adopt.  That  of  the  dimensions  of  the 
globe,  prefeiTed  ultimately  by  the  French,  after  first  adopting  the 
other,  has  been  objected  to  from  the  difficulty,  not  to  say  imprac- 
ticability, of  the  verification  of  their  admeasurement  by  other  na- 
tions. Except  the  portion  of  a  meridian  which  they  adopted  for 
their  operation,  there  is  not  another  on  the  globe  which  fulfils  the 
requisite  conditions,  to  wit,  of  so  considerable  length,  that  length 
too  divided,  not  very  unequally,  by  the  4.5th  degree  of  latitude, 
and  terminating  at  each  end  in  the  ocean.  Now,  this  singular 
line  lies  wholly  in  France  and  Spain.  Besides  the  immensity 
of  expense  and  time  which  a  verification  would  always  require, 
it  cannot  be  undertaken  by  any  nation  without  the  joint  consent 
of  these  two  powers.  France  having  once  performed  the  work 
and  refusing,  as  she  may,  to  let  any  other  nation  re-examine  it, 
she  makes  herself  the  sole  depository  of  the  original  standard  foi 
all  nations ;  and  all  must  send  to  her  to  obtain,  and  from  time  tc 
time  to  prove  their  standards.  To  this,  indeed,  it  may  be  an- 
swered, that  there  can  be  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  mensuration 
has  been  as  accurately  performed  as  the  intervention  of  numerous 
waters,  and  of  high  ridges  of  craggy  mountains,  would  admit ; 
that  all  the  calculations  have  been  free  of  error,  their  coincidences 
faithfully  reported,  and  that,  whether  in  peace  or  war,  to  foes  as 
well  as  friends,  free  access  to  the  original  will  at  all  times  be  ad- 
mitted. In  favor  of  the  standard  to  be  taken  from  the  time  em-' 
ployed  in  a  revolution  of  the  earth  on  its  axis,  it  may  be  urged 
that  this  revolution  is  a  matter  of  fact  present  to  all  the  world, 
that  its  division  into  seconds  of  time  is  known  and  received  by 
all  the  world,  that  the  length  of  a  pendulum  vibrating  seconds 
ill  the  different  circles  of  latitude  is  already  known  to  all,  and 
cau  at  any  time  nid  in  any  place  be  ascertained  by  any  nation 
or  individual,  and  mferred  by  known  laws  from  their  own  to  the 
medium  latitude  of  45°,  whenever  any  doubt  may  make  this  de- 
sirable ;  and  that  this  is  the  particular  standard  which  has  at  dif- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  gg 

ferent  times  been  contemplated  and  desn-ed*  by  the  philosophers 
of  every  nation,  and  even  by  those  of  France,  except  at  the  par- 
ticular moment  when  this  change  was  suddenly  proposed  and 
adopted,  and  under  circumstances  peculiar  to  the  history  of  the 
moment.  But  the  cogent  reason  which  will  decide  the  fate  of 
whatever  you  report  is,  that  England  has  lately  adopted  the  ref- 
erence of  its  measures  to  the  pendulum.  It  is  the  mercantile 
part  of  our  community  which  will  have  most  to  do  in  this  inno- 
vation ;  it  is  that  which  having  command  of  all  the  presses  can 
make  the  loudest  outcry,  and  you  know  their  identification  with 
English  regulations,  practices,  and  prejudices.  It  is  from  this 
identification  alone  you  can  hope  to  be  permitted  to  adopt  even 
the  English  reference  to  a  pendulum.  But  the  English  propo- 
sition goes  only  to  say  what  proportion  their  measures  bear  to 
the  second  pendulum  of  their  own  latitude,  and  not  at  all  to 
change  their  unit,  or  to  reduce  into  any  simple  order  the  chaos 
of  their  weights  and  measures.  That  would  be  innovation,  and 
innovation  there  is  heresy  and  treason.  Whether  the  Senate 
meant  more  than  this  I  do  not  know ;  and  much  doubt  if  more 
can  he  effected.  However,  in  endeavors  to  improve  our  situa- 
tion, we  should  never  despair  ;  and  I  sincerely  wish  you  may  be 
able  to  rally  us  to  either  standard,  and  to  give  us  an  unit,  the 
aliquot  part  of  something  invariable  which  may  be  applied  simply 
and  conveniently  to  our  measures,  weights,  and  coins,  and  most 
especially  that  the  decimal  divisions  may  pervade  the  whole. 
The  convenience  of  this  in  our  monied  system  has  been  approved 
by  all,  and  France  has  followed  the  example.  The  volume  of 
tracts  which  you  have  noted  in  the  library  of  Congress,  contains 
everything  which  I  had  then  been  able  to  collect  on  this  subject. 
You  will  find  some  details  which  may  be  of  use  in  two  thin 
4to  vols.,  Nos.  399,  400,  of  chapter  xxiv.  ;  the  latter  being  a  col- 
lection of  sheets  selected  from  the  ''  Encyclopedic  Meihodique," 

*  If  conforming  to  this  desire  of  other  nations,  we  adopt  the  second  pendulum, 
^\  of  that  for  our  foot  will  be  the  same  as  !  or  j%  of  the  second  rod,  because  that 
rod  is  to  the  pendulum  as  3  to  2.  This  would  make  our  foot  i  inch  less  than  the 
oreaent  one. 


90  JEFFERSOX'S    WOEKS. 

on  Lhe  weights,  measures  and  coins  of  all  nations,  bound  up  to- 
gether and  alone  ;  and  the  former  a  supplement  by  Beyerle. 
Cooper's  Emporium  too,  for  May  1812,  and  August  1813,  may 
offer  something.  The  reports  of  the  Committees  of  Parliament 
of  1758-9,  I  think  you  will  find  in  Postlethwaite's  Dictionary, 
which  is  also  in  the  library,  chapter  20,  No.  10.  That  of  Mechain 
and  Delambre  I  have  not,  nor  do  I  know  who  has  it. 

I  have  lately  seen  a  book  which  your  office  ought  to  possess, 
if  it  has  it  not  already,  entitled  "  Memoir e  sur  la  Louisiana, 
par  M.  le  Comte  de  Vergennes,  8vo,  Paris,  chez  Lepetit,  Jeune, 
1802."  It  contains  more  in  detail  the  proofs  of  the  extent  of 
Louisiana  as  far  as  the  Rio  Grande  than  I  have  ever  before  seen, 
and  its  author  gives  it  authenticity.  It  has  been  executed  with 
great  industry  and  research  into  the  French  records.  This  re- 
minds me  of  a  MS.  which  Governor  Claiborne  found  in  a  private 
family  in  Louisiana,  being  a  journal  kept  (I  forget  by  whom, 
but)  by  a  confidential  oflicer  of  the  government,  proving  exactly 
by  what  connivance  between  the  agents  of  the  compagnie  (F  ac- 
cident and  the  Spaniards  these  last  smuggled  settlements  into 
Louisiana  as  far  as  Assinais,  Adais,  &c..  for  the  purpose  of  cov- 
ering the  contraband  trade  of  the  company.  Claiborne  being 
afraid  to  trust  the  original  by  mail  without  keeping  a  copy,  sent 
it  on.  It  arrived  safe,  and  was  deposited  in  the  office  of  State. 
He  then  sent  me  the  copy  on  the  destruction  of  the  office  at 
Washington  by  the  British,  apprehending  the  original  might  be 
involved  in  that  destruction.  I  sent  the  copy  to  Colonel  Monroe, 
then  Secretary  of  State,  with  a  request  to  return  it  if  the  original 
was  safe,  and  to  keep  it  if  not.  I  have  heard  no  more  of  it  ;  but 
will  now  request  of  you  to  have  search  made  for  the  original,  and 
if  safe,  to  return  me  the  copy.  I  propose  to  deposit  it  with  the 
historical  committee  of  the  Philosophical  Society  at  Philadelphia, 
for  safe  keeping.  I  have  no  use  nor  wish  for  such  a  thing  my- 
sef,  but  think  it  will  be  safer  in  two  deposits  than  one.  My  rec- 
ommendation to  Colonel  Monroe,  was  to  have  it  printed.  I 
have  barely  left  myself  room  to  express  my  satisfaction  at  your 
call  to  the  important  office  you  hold,  and  to  tender  you  the  as- 
iirance  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


CORRESPONDElSrOE.  91 


TO    MB.    DUPONCEAU. 

Mo^TIOKLL(l,  November  7,  1817. 

Dear  Sib, — A  part  of  the  information  of  which  the  expe- 
dition of  Lewis  and  Clarke  was  the  object,  has  been  communi- 
cated to  the  world  by  the  publication  of  their  journal ;  but  much 
and  valuable  matter  yet  remains  uncommunicated.  The  cor- 
rection of  the  longitudes  of  their  map  is  essential  to  its  value  ; 
to  which  purpose  their  observations  of  the  lunar  distances  are 
to  be  calculated  and  applied.  The  new  subjects  they  discov- 
ered in  the  vegetable,  animal,  and  mineral  departments,  are  to 
be  digested  and  made  known.  The  numerous  vocabularies  they 
obtained  of  the  Indian  languages  are  to  be  collated  and  published. 
Although  the  whole  expense  of  the  expedition  was  furnished  by 
the  public,  and  the  information  to  be  derived  from  it  was  theirs 
also,  yet  on  the  return  of  Messrs.  Lewis  and  Clarke,  the  govern- 
ment thought  it  just  to  leave  to  them  any  pecuniary  benefit 
which  might  result  from  a  publication  of  the  papers,  and  sup- 
posed, indeed,  that  this  would  secure  the  best  form  of  publica- 
tion. But  the  property  in  these  papers  still  remained  in  the  gov- 
ernment for  the  benefit  of  their  constituents.  With  the  measures 
taken  by  Governor  Lewis  for  their  publication,  I  was  never  ac- 
quainted. After  his  death.  Governor  Clarke  put  them,  in  the  first 
instance,  into  the  hands  of  the  late  Doctor  Barton,  from  whom  some 
of  them  passed  to  Mr.  Biddle,  and  some  again,  I  believe,  from  him 
to  Mr.  Allen.  While  the  MS.  books  of  journals  were  in  the  hands 
of  Dr.  Barton,  I  wrote  to  him,  on  behalf  of  Governor  Lewis' 
family,  requesting  earnestly,  that,  as  soon  as  these  should  be  pub- 
lished, the  originals  might  be  returned,  as  the  family  wished  to  have 
them  preserved.  He  promised  in  his  answer  that  it  should  be 
faithfully  done.  After  his  death,  I  obtained,  through  the  kind 
agency  of  Mr.  Correa,  from  Mrs.  Barton,  three  of  those  books,  of 
which  I  knew  there  had  been  ten  or  twelve,  having  myself  read 
them.  These  were  all  she  cotdd  find.  The  rest,  therefore,  I 
presume,  are  in  the  hands  of  the  other  gentlemen.  After  the 
agency  I  had  had  in  effecting  this  expedition,  I  thought  myself 


92  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

authorized,  and,  indeed,  that  it  would  he  expected  of  me,  that  I 
should  follow  up  the  subject,  and  endeavor  to  obtain  its  fruits  foi 
the  public.  I  wrote  to  General  Clarke,  therefore,  for  authority 
to  receive  the  original  papers.  He  gave  it  in  the  letters  to  Mr. 
Biddle  and  to  myself,  which  I  now  enclose.  As  the  custody  of 
these  papers  belonged  properly  to  the  War-Office,  and  that  was 
vacant  at  the  time,  I  have  waited  several  months  for  its  being 
filled.  But  the  office  still  remaining  vacant,  and  my  distance 
rendering  any  effectual  measures,  by  myself,  impracticable,  I  ask 
the  agency  of  your  committee,  within  whose  province  I  propose 
to  place  the  matter,  by  making  it  the  depository  of  the  paj)ers  gen- 
erally. I  therefore  now  forward  the  three  volumes  of  MS.  jour- 
nals in  my  possession,  and  authorize  them,  under  General 
Clarke's  letters,  to  inquire  for  and  to  receive  the  rest.  So  also 
the  astronomical  and  geographical  papers,  those  relating  to  zoo- 
logical, botanical,  and  mineral  subjects,  with  the  Indian  vocabu- 
laries, and  statistical  tables  relative  to  the  Indians.  Of  the  as- 
tronomical and  geographical  papers,  if  the  committee  will  be  so 
good  as  to  give  me  a  statement,  I  will,  as  soon  as  a  Secretary  at 
War  is  appointed,  propose  to  him  to  have  made,  at  the  public 
expense,  the  requisite  calculations,  to  have  the  map  corrected  in 
its  longitudes  and  latitudes,  engraved  and  published  on  a  proper 
scale  ;  and  I  will  ask  from  General  Clarke  the  one  he  offers,  with 
his  corrections.  With  respect  to  the  zoological  and  mineralogical 
papers  and  subjects,  it  would  perhaps  be  agreeable  to  the  Philo- 
sophical Society,  to  have  a  digest  of  them  made,  and  published 
in  their  transactions  or  otherwise.  And  if  it  should  be  within 
the  views  of  the  historical  committee  to  have  the  Indian  vocab- 
ularies digested  and  published,  I  would  add  to  them  the  remains 
of  my  collection.  I  had  through  the  course  of  my  life  availed 
myself  of  every  opportunity  of  procuring  vocabularies  of  the 
languages  of  every  tribe  which  either  myself  or  my  friends 
could  have  access  to.  They  amounted  to  about  forty,  more  or 
less  perfect.  But  in  th'^ir  passage  from  Washington  to  this  pkce, 
the  trunk  in  which  they  were  was  stolen  and  plundered,  and 
some  fragments  only  of  the  vocabularies  were  recovered.     Still,. 


CORRESPONDENCE,  93 

however,  they  were  such  as  would  be  worth  incorporation  with 
a  larger  work,  and  shall  be  at  the  service  of  the  historical  com- 
mittee, if  they  can  make  any  use  of  them.  Permit  me  to  request 
the  return  of  General  Clarke's  letter,  and  to  add  assurances  of 
my  respect  and  esteem. 

P  S.  With  the  volumes  of  MS.  journal,  Mrs.  Barton  delivered 
one  by  mistake  I  suppose,  which  seems  to  have  been  the  journal 
of  some  botanist.  I  presume  it  was  the  property  of  Dr.  Barton, 
and  therefore  forward  it  to  you  to  be  returned  to  Mrs.  Barton. 


TO    MR.    COKREA. 

Poplar  Forest,  November  25,  1817. 

Dear  Sir, — I  am  highly  gratified  by  the  interest  you  take  in 
our  Central  College,  and  the  more  so  as  it  may  possibly  be- 
come an  inducement  to  pass  more  of  your  time  with  us.  It  is 
even  said  you  had  thought  of  engaging  a  house  in  its  neighbor- 
hood. But  why  another  house  ?  Is  not  one  enough  ?  and  es- 
pecially one  whose  inhabitants  are  made  so  happy  by  your  be- 
coming their  inmate  ?  When  you  shall  have  a  wife  and  family 
wishing  to  be  to  themselves,  then  the  question  of  another  house 
may  be  taken  ad  referendum.  I  wish  Dr.  Cooper  could  have 
the  same  partialities.  He  seems  to  have  misunderstood  my  last 
letter ;  in  the  former  I  had  spoken  of  opening  our  Physical  School 
in  the  spring  of  '19,  but  learning  that  that  delay  might  render 
his  engagement  uncertain,  the  visitors  determined  to  force  their 
preparations  so  as  to  receive  him  by  midsummer  next,  and  so  my 
letter  stated.  In  one  I  now  write,  I  recall  his  attention  to  that 
circumstance.  But  his  decision  will  no  doubt  be  governed  by 
the  result  of  the  proposition,  to  permit  the  medical  students  of 
Philadelphia  to  attend  him.  I  can  never  regret  any  circumstance 
which  may  add  to  his  well-being,  for  I  most  sincerely  wish  him 
well.  That  himself  and  Mrs.  Cooper  will  be  happier  in  the  so- 
ciety of  Philadelphia,  cannot  be  doubted.     It  would  be  flattering 


94  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

enough  to  ns  to  be  his  second  choice.  I  find  from  his  informa- 
tion that  we  are  not  to  expect  to  obtain  in  this  country  either  a 
classical  or  mathematical  professor  of  the  first  order ;  and  as  our 
institution  cannot  be  raised  above  the  common  herd  of  academies, 
colleges,  (fcc,  already  scattered  over  our  country,  but  by  super- 
eminent  professors,  we  have  determined  to  accept  of  no  medioc- 
rity, and  to  seek  in  Europe  for  what  is  eminent.  We  shall  go 
to  Edinburgh  in  preference,  because  of  the  advantage  to  students 
of  receiving  communications  in  their  native  tongue,  and  because 
peculiar  and  personal  circumstances  will  enable  us  to  interest 
Dugald  Stewart  and  Professor  Leslie,  of  that  College,  in  procur- 
ing us  subjects  of  real  worth  and  eminence.  I  put  off  writing  to 
them  for  a  classical  and  mathematical  professor  only  until  I  see 
what  our  legislature,  which  meets  on  Monday  next,  is  disposed 
to  do,  either  on  the  question  singly  of  adopting  our  college  for 
their  university,  or  on  that  of  entering  at  once  on  a  general  sys- 
tem of  instruction,  for  which  they  have  for  some  time  been  pre- 
paring. For  this  last  purpose  I  have  sketched,  and  put  into  the 
hands  of  a  member  a  bill,  delineating  a  practicable  plan,  entirely 
within  the  means  they  already  have  on  hand,  destined  to  this  object. 
My  bill  proposes,  1.  Elementary  schools  in  every  county,  which 
shall  place  every  householder  within  three  miles  of  a  school.  2. 
District  colleges,  which  shall  place  every  father  within  a  day's 
ride  of  a  college  where  he  may  dispose  of  his  son.  3.  An  uni- 
versity in  a  healthy  and  central  situation,  with  the  offer  of  the 
lands,  buildings,  and  funds  of  the  Central  College,  if  they  will 
accept  that  place  for  their  establishment.  In  the  1st  will  be 
taught  reading,  writing,  common  arithmetic,  and  general  notions 
of  geography.  In  the  2d,  ancient  and  modern  languages, 
geography  fully,  a  higher  degree  of  numerical  arithmetic,  men- 
suration, and  the  elementary  principles  of  navigation.  In  the 
3d,  all  the  useful  sciences  in  their  highest  degree.  To  all  of 
which  is  added  a  selection  from  the  elementary  schools  of  sub- 
jects of  the  most  promising  genius,  whose  parents  are  too  poor 
to  give  them  further  education,  to  be  carried  at  the  public  ex- 
pense through  the  colleges  and  university.     The  object  is  tc 


CORRESPONDENCE.  95 

bring  into  action  that  mass  of  talents  which  lies  buried  in  poverty 
in  every  country,  for  want  of  the  means  of  development,  and 
thus  give  activity  to  a  mass  of  mind,  which,  in  proportion  to  our 
population,  shall  be  the  double  or  treble  of  what  it  is  in  most 
countries.  The  expense  of  the  elementary  schools  for  every 
county,  is  proposed  to  be  levied  on  the  wealth  of  the  county,  and 
all  children  rich  and  poor  to  be  educated  at  these  three  years 
gratis.  The  expense  of  the  colleges  and  university,  admitting 
two  professors  to  each  of  the  former,  and  ten  to  the  latter,  can  be 
completely  and  permanently  established  with  a  sum  of  five  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars,  in  addition  to  the  present  funds  of  our 
Central  College.  Our  literary  fund  has  already  on  hand,  and  ap- 
propriated to  these  purposes,  a  sum  of  seven  hundred  thousand 
dollars,  and  that  increasing  yearly.  This  is  in  fact  and  substance 
the  plan  I  proposed  in  a  bill  forty  years  ago,  but  accommodated 
to  the  circumstances  of  this,  instead  of  that  day.  I  derive  my 
present  hopes  that  it  may  now  be  adopted,  from  the  fact  that  the 
House  of  Representatives,  at  their  last  session,  passed  a  bill,  less 
practicable  and  boundlessly  expensive,  and  therefore  alone  re- 
jected by  the  Senate,  and  printed  for  public  consideration  and 
amendment.  Mine,  after  all,  may  be  an  Utopian  dream,  but 
being  innocent,  I  have  thought  I  might  indulge  in  it  till  I  go  to 
the  land  of  dreams,  and  sleep  there  with  the  dreamers  of  all  past 
and  future  times. 

I  have  taken  measm-es  to  obtain  the  crested  turkey,  and  Avill 
endeavor  to  perpetuate  that  beautiful  and  singular  characteristic, 
and  shall  be  not  less  earnest  in  endeavors  to  raise  the  Moronnier. 
God  bless  you,  and  j)reserve  you  long  in  life  and  health,  until 
wearied  with  delighting  your  kindred  spirits  here,  you  may  wish 
to  encounter  the  great  problem,  untried  by  the  hving,  unreported 
by  the  dead. 


96  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


TO    ME.    DUPONCEAU. 

MoNTiCKLio,  December.  30,  1817. 

Dear  Sir, — An  absence  of  six  weeks  has  occasioned  joui 
letters  of  the  5th  and  11th  inst.,  to  lie  thus  long  unacknowl- 
edged. After  I  had  sent  off  the  two  other  Westover  MSS.  I  re- 
ceived a  third  of  the  same  journal.  On  perusing  it  I  am  not  sen- 
sible by  memory,  of  anything  not  contained  in  the  former,  ex- 
cept eight  pages  of  a  preliminary  account  of  the  abridgment  of 
our  limits  by  successive  charters  to  other  colonies.  I  suppose 
this  to  be  a  copy  of  the  largest  of  the  other  two,  entered  fair  in 
a  folio  volume,  with  other  documents  relating  to  the  government 
of  Virginia.  It  is  bound  in  vellum,  and,  by  the  arms  pasted  iu 
it,  seems  to  have  been  mtended  for  the  shelves  of  the  author's 
library.  As  this  journal  is  complete  it  might  enable  lis  to  sup- 
ply the  hiatuses  of  the  other  copies. 

I  now  send  you  the  remains  of  my  Indian  vocabularies,  some 
of  which  are  perfect.  I  send  with  them  the  fragments  of  my 
digest  of  them,  which  were  gathered  up  on  the  banks  of  the 
river  where  they  had  been  strewed  by  the  plunderers  of  the 
trunk  in  which  they  were.  These  will  merely  show  the  arrange- 
ment I  had  given  the  vocabularies,  according  to  their  affinities 
and  degrees  of  resemblance  or  dissimilitude. 

If  you  can  recover  Capt.  Lewis'  collection,  they  will  make 
an  important  addition,  for  there  was  no  part  of  his  instructions 
which  he  executed  more  fully  or  carefully,  never  meeting  with 
a  single  Indian  of  a  new  tribe,  without  making  his  vocabulary 
the  first  object.  What  Professor  Adelung  mentions  of  the  Em- 
press Catharine's  having  procured  many  vocabularies  of  our  In- 
dians, is  correct.  She  applied  to  M.  de  La  Fayette,  who,  through 
the  aid  of  General  Washington,  obtained  several ;  but  I  never 
learnt  of  what  particular  tribes.  The  great  works  of  Pallas  being 
rare,  I  will  mention  that  there  are  two  editions  of  it,  the  one  in 
two  volumes,  the  other  in  four  volumes  4lo,  :.i  the  library  I 
ceded  to  Congress,  which  may  be  consulted.  But  the  Professor's 
account  of  the  supposed  Mexican  MS.  is  quite  erroneous,  nor  cai. 


OORRESPOi^DEiilOJ!,.  97 

1  conceive  through  whom  he  can  have  receivea  lus  mlormation. 
It  has  probably  been  founded  on  an  imperfect  knowledge  of  the 
following  fact :  Soon  after  the  acquisition  of  Louisiana,  Gover- 
nor Claiborne  foimd,  in  a  private  family  there,  a  MS.  journal 
kept,  (I  forget  by  whom,)  but  by  a  confidential  officer  of  the 
French  government,  proving  exactly  by  what  connivance  be- 
tween the  agents  of  the  compagnie  d'occident,  and  the  Span- 
iards, these  last  smuggled  settlements  into  Louisiana,  as  far  as 
Assinais,  Adais,  (fcc,  for  the  purpose  of  covering  the  contraband 
trade  of  the  company.  Claiborne,  being  afraid  to  tru&t  the  origi- 
nal by  mail,  without  keeping  a  copy,  sent  it  on  after  being  copied. 
It  an-ived  safe,  and  was  deposited  by  me  in  the  office  of  State. 
He  then  sent  me  the  copy,  on  the  destruction  of  the  office  at 
Washington  by  the  British  ;  apprehending  the  original  might  be 
involved  in  that  destruction,  I  sent  the  copy  to  Colonel  Monroe, 
then  Secretary  of  State,  with  a  request  to  return  it,  if  the  origi- 
nal was  safe,  and  to  keep  it,  if  not.  I  have  heard  no  more  of 
it.  My  intention  was,  and  is,  if  it  is  returned  to  me,  to  deposit 
it  with  your  committee  for  safe  keeping  or  publication.  While 
on  the  subject  of  Louisiana,  I  have  thought  I  had  better  commit 
to  you  also  an  historical  memoir  of  my  own  respecting  the  im- 
portant question  of  its  limits.  When  we  first  made  the  purchase 
we  knew  little  of  its  extent,  having  never  before  been  interested 
to  inquire  into  it.  Possessing,  then,  in  my  library,  everything 
respecting  America  which  I  had  been  able  to  collect  by  unre- 
mitting researches,  during  my  residence  in  Europe,  particularly 
and  generally  through  my  life,  I  availed  myself  of  the  leisure  of 
my  succeeding  autumnal  recess  from  Washington,  to  bring  togeth- 
er everything  which  my  collection  furnished  on  the  subject  of 
its  boundary.  The  result  was  the  memoir  I  now  send  you, 
copies  of  which  were  furnished  to  our  ministers  at  Paris  and  Mad- 
rid, for  their  information  as  to  the  extent  of  territory  claimed  un- 
der our  purchase.  The  New  Orleans  MS.  afterwards  discovered, 
(iirnished  some  valuable  supplementary  proofs  of  title. 

I  defer  writing  to  the  Secretary  at  War  respecting  the  observa- 
tions of  longitude  and  latitude  by  Capt.  Lewis,  until  I  learn  from 


JE"F¥ERSON'S    WORTv'S. 


you  whetlier  tbey  are  recovered,  and  whether  they  are  so  com- 
plete as  to  be  susceptilDle  of  satisfactory  calculation.  I  salute 
you  with-  great  respect  and  esteem.  / 


TO  MR.  Wirt. 

'  MoNxrcKLLO,  January  5,  1818. 

I  have  first  to  thank  you,  dear  Sir,  for  the  copy  of  your  late 
work  which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me,  and  then  to 
render  you  double  congratulations,  first,  on  the  general  applause 
it  has  so  justly  received,  and  next  on  the  public  testimony  of 
esteem  for  its  author,  manifested  by  your  late  call  to  the  execu- 
tive councils  of  the  nation.  All  this  I  do  heartily,  and  then  pro- 
ceed to  a  case  of  business  on  which  you  will  have  to  advise  the 
government  on  the  threshold  of  your  office.  You  have  seen  the 
death  of  General  Kosciusko  announced  in  the  papers  in  such  a 
way  as  not  to  be  doubted.  He  had  in  the  funds  of  the  United 
States  a  very  considerable  sum  of  money,  on  the  interest  of 
which  he  depended  for  subsistence.  On  his  leaving  the  United 
States,  in  1798,  he  placed  it  under  my  direction  by  a  power  of 
attorney,  which  I  executed  entirely  through  Mr.  Barnes,  who 
regularly  remitted  his  interest.  But  he  left  also  in  my  hands  an 
autograph  will,  disposing  of  his  funds  in  a  particular  course  of 
charity,  and  making  me  his  executor.  The  question  the  govern- 
ment will  ask  of  you,  and  which  I  therefore  ask,  is  in  what  court 
must  this  will  be  proved,  and  my  qualification  as  executor  be  re- 
ceived, to  justify  the  United  States  in  placing  these  funds  under 
the  trust  ?  This  is  to  be  executed  wholly  in  this  State,  and  will 
occupy  so  long  a  course  of  time  beyond  what  I  can  expect  to 
live,  that  I  think  to  propose  to  place  it  under  the  Court  of  Chan- 
cery. The  place  of  probate  generally  follows  the  lesidence  of 
the  testator.  That  was  in  a  foreign  country  in  the  present  case. 
Sometimes  the  bona  notabilia.  The  evidences  or  representations 
of  these  (the  certificates)  are  in  my  hands.  The  things  repre- 
sented  (the  money)  in  those  of  the  United  States.     But  where 


OOERESPONDENOE,  99 

are  the  United  States  ?  Everywhere,  I  suppose,  where  they  have 
government  or  property  Hable  to  the  demand  on  payment.  That 
is  to  say,  in  every  State  of  the  Union,  in  this,  for  example,  as 
well  as  any  other,  strengthened  by  the  circumstances  of  the  de- 
posit of  the  will,  the  residence  of  the  executor,  and  the  place 
where  the  trust  is  to  be  executed.  In  no  instance,  I  believe, 
does  the  mere  habitation  of  the  debtor  draw  to  it  the  place  of 
probate,  and  if  it  did,  the  United  States  are  omnipresent  by  their 
functionaries,  as  well  as  property  in  every  State  of  the  Union.  I 
am  led  by  these  considerations  to  suppose  our  district  or  general 
court  competent  to  the  object ;  but  you  know  best,  and  by  your 
advice,  sanctioned  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  I  shall  act. 
I  write  to  the  Secretary  on  this  subject.  If  our  district  court  will 
do,  I  can  attend  it  personally  ;  if  the  general  court  only  be  com- 
petent, I  am  in  hopes  it  will  find  means  of  dispensing  with  my 
personal  attendance.  I  salute  you  with  affectionate  esteem  and 
respect. 


TO    DR.    BENJAMIN    WATERHOUSE. 

MoNTiCELLO,  March  3,  1818. 

Dear  Sir, — I  have  just  received  your  favor  of  February  20th, 
in  which  you  observe  that  Mr.  Wirt,  on  page  47  of  his  Life  of 
Patrick  Henry,  quotes  me  as  saying  that  "  Mr.  Henry  certainly 
gave  the  first  impulse  to  the  ball  of  revolution."  I  well  recollect 
to  have  used  some  such  expression  in  a  letter  to  him,  and  am  tol- 
erably certain  that  our  own  State  being  the  subject  under  contem- 
plation, I  must  have  used  it  with  respect  to  that  only.  Whether 
he  has  given  it  a  more  general  aspect  I  cannot  say,  as  the  pas- 
sage is  not  in  the  page  you  quote,  nor,  after  thumbing  over  much 
of  the  book,  have  I  been  able  to  find  it.*  In  page  417  there  is 
something  like  it,  but  not  the  exact  expression,  and  even  there  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  Mr.  Wirt  had  his  eye  on  Virginia  alone, 
or  on  all  the  colonies.  But  the  question,  who  commenced  tha 
revolution  ?  is  as  difRcult  as  that  of  the  first  inventors  of  a  thou- 

[*  It  was  found  page  41.] 


LOO  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

sand  good  things.  For  example,  who  first  discovered  the  prin- 
ciple of  gravity  ?  Not  Newton  ;  for  Galileo,  who  died  the  year 
that  Newton  was  born,  had  measured  its  force  in  the  descent  of 
gravid  bodies.  Who  invented  the  Lavoiserian  chemistry  ?  The 
English  say  Dr.  Black,  by  the  preparatory  discovery  of  latent 
heat.  Who  mvented  the  steamboat  ?  Was  it  Gerbert,  the  Mar- 
quis of  Worcester,  Newcomen,  Savary,  Papin,  Pitch,  Fulton  ? 
The  fact  is,  that  one  new  idea  leads  to  another,  that  to  a  third, 
and  so  on  through  a  course  of  time  until  some  one,  with  whom 
no  one  of  these  ideas  was  original,  combines  all  together,  and 
produces  what  is  justly  called  a  new  invention.  I  suppose  it 
would  be  as  difficult  to  trace  our  revolution  to  its  first  embryo. 
We  do  not  know  how  long  it  was  hatching  in  the  British  cabinet 
before  they  ventured  to  make  the  first  of  the  experiments  which 
were  to  develop  it  in  the  end  and  to  produce  complete  parliament- 
ary supremacy.  Those  you  mention  in  Massachusetts  as  preced- 
ing the  stamp  act,  might  be  the  first  visible  symptoms  of  that  de- 
sign. The  proposition  of  that  act  in  1764,  was  the  first  here. 
Your  opposition,  therefore,  preceded  ours,  as  occasion  was  sooner 
given  there  than  here,  and  the  truth,  I  suppose,  is,  that  the  oppo- 
sition in  every  colony  began  whenever  the  encroachment  was 
presented  to  it.  This  question  of  priority  is  as  the  inquiry  would 
be  who  first,  of  the  three  hundred  Spartans,  offered  his  name  to 
Leonidas  ?  I  shall  be  happy  to  see  justice  done  to  the  merits  of 
all,  by  the  unexceptionable  umpirage  of  date  and  facts,  and  es- 
pecially from  the  pen  which  is  proposed  to  he  employed  in  it. 

I  rejoice,  indeed,  to  learn  from  you  that  Mr.  Adams  retains  the 
strength  of  his  memory,  his  faculties,  his  cheerfulness,  and  even 
his  epistolary  industry.  This  last  is  gone  from  me.  The  aver- 
sion has  been  growing  on  me  for  a  considerable  time,  and  now, 
near  the  close  of  seventy-five,  is  become  almost  insuperable.  I 
am  much  debilitated  in  body,  and  my  memory  sensibly  on  the 
wane.  Still,  however,  I  enjoy  good  health  and  spirits,  and  am 
as  industrious  a  reader  as  when  a  student  at  college.  Not  of 
newspapers.  These  I  have  discarded.  I  relinquish,  as  I  ought 
to  do,  all  intermeddling  with  public  affairs,  committing  myself 


COKKESPONDENOE.  101 

cheerfully  to  the  watch  and  care  of  those  for  whom,  in  my  turn 
T  have  watched  and  cared.  When  I  contemplate  the  immenst 
advances  in  science  and  discoveries  in  the  arts  which  have  been 
made  within  the  period  of  my  life,  I  look  forward  with  con- 
fidence to  equal  advances  by  the  present  generation,  and  have  no 
doubt  they  will  consequently  be  as  much  wiser  than  we  have 
been  as  we  than  our  fathers  were,  and  they  than  the  burners  of 
•witches.  Even  the  metaphysical  contest,  ^vhich  you  so  pleas- 
antly described  to  me  in  a  former  letter,  will  probably  end  in  im- 
provement, by  clearing  the  mind  of  Platonic  mysticism  and  un- 
intelligible jargon.  Although  age  is  taking  from  me  the  power 
of  communicating  by  letter  with  my  friends  as  industriously  as 
heretofore,  I  shall  still  claim  with  them  the  same  place  they  wil' 
ever  hold  iiT  my  affections,  and  on  this  ground  I,  with  sincerity 
and  pleasure,  assm-e  you  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    N.    BURWELL,  ESQ. 

MoNTiCELLO,  March  14,  1818. 

Dear  Sib, — Your  letter  of  February  17th  found  me  suffering 
under  an  attack  of  rheumatism,  which  has  but  now  left  me  at 
sufficient  ease  to  attend  to  the  letters  I  have  received.  A  plan 
of  female  education  has  never  been  a  subject  of  systematic  con- 
templation with  me.  It  has  occupied  my  attention  so  far  only  as 
the  education  of  my  own  daughters  occasionally  required.  Con- 
sidering that  they  would  be  placed  in  a  country  situation,  where 
little  aid  could  be  obtained  from  abroad,  I  thought  it  essential  tc 
give  them  a  solid  education,  which  might  enable  them,  when  be- 
come mothers,  to  educate  their  own  daughters,  and  even  to  di- 
rect the  course  for  sons,  should  their  fathers  be  lost,  or  incapable, 
or  inattentive.  My  surviving  daughter  accordingly,  the  mother 
of  many  daughters  as  well  as  sons,  has  made  their  education  the 
object  of  her  life,  and  being  a  better  judge  of  the  practical  part 
than  myself,  it  is  with  her  aid  and  that  of  one  of  her  eleves,  that 


102  JEFFEPw  SON'S    WORKS. 

I  shall  subjoin  a  catalogue  of  the  boolis  for  such  a  course  of  read- 
ing as  we  have  practiced. 

A  great  obstacle  to  good  education  is  the  inordinate  passion 
prevalent  for  novels,  and  the  time  lost  in  that  reading  which 
should  be  instructively  employed.  When  this  poison  infects  the 
mind,  it  destroys  its  tone  and  revolts  it  against  wholesome  read- 
ing. Reason  and  fact,  plain  and  unadorned,  are  rejected.  No- 
thing can  engage  attention  unless  dressed  in  all  the  figments  of 
fancy,  and  nothing  so  bedecked  comes  amiss.  The  result  is  a 
bloated  imagination,  sickly  judgment,  and  disgust  towards  all 
the  real  businesses  of  life.  This  mass  of  trash,  however,  is  not 
Nvithout  some  distinction  ;  some  few  modelling  their  narratives, 
although  fictitious,  on  the  incidents  of  real  life,  have  been  able 
to  make  them  interesting  and  useful  vehicles  of  a  sound  morality. 
Such,  I  think,  are  Marmontel's  new  moral  tales,  but  not  his  old 
ones,  which  are  really  immoral.  Such  are  the  writings  of  Miss 
Edge  worth,  and  some  of  those  of  Madame  Genlis.  For  a  like 
reason,  too,  much  poetry  should  not  be  indulged.  Some  is  useful 
for  forming  style  and  taste.  Pope,  Dryden,  Thompson,  Shaks- 
peare,  and  of  the  French,  Moliere,  Racine,  the  Corneilles,  may 
be  read  with  pleasure  and  improvement. 

The  French  language,  become  that  of  the  general  intercourse 
of  nations,  and  from  their  extraordinary  advances,  now  the  de- 
pository of  all  science,  is  an  indispensable  part  of  education  for 
both  sexes.  In  the  subjoined  catalogue,  therefore,  I  have  placed 
the  books  of  both  languages  indifferently,  according  as  the  one 
or  the  other  offers  what  is  best. 

The  ornaments  too,  and  the  amusements  of  life,  are  entitled 
to  their  portion  of  attention.  These,  for  a  female,  are  dancing, 
drawing,  and  music.  The  first  is  a  healthy  exercise,  elegant  and 
very  attractive  for  young  people.  Every  affectionate  parent 
would  be  pleased  to  see  his  daughter  qualified  to  participate  with 
her  companions,  and  without  awkwardness  at  least,  in  the  circles 
of  festivity,  of  which  she  occasionally  becomes  a  part.  I<:  is  a 
necessary  accomplishment,  therefore,  although  of  short  i,ie  ,  for 
the  French  rule  is  wise,  that  no  lady  dances  after  marriage.     This 


CORRESPONDENCE.  103 

is  founded  in  solid  physical  reasons,  gestation  and  nursing  leav- 
ing little  time  to  a  married  lady  when  this  exercise  can  be  either 
safe  or  innocent.  Drawing  is  thought  less  of  in  this  country 
tlian  in  Europe.  It  is  an  innocent  and  engaging  amusement, 
often  useful,  and  a  qualification  not  to  be  neglected  in  one  who 
is  to  become  a  mother  and  an  instructor.  Music  is  invaluable 
where  a  person  has  an  ear.  Where  the^^  have  not,  it  should  not 
be  attempted.  It  furnishes  a  delightful  recreation  for  the  hours 
of  respite  from  the  cares  of  the  day,  and  lasts  us  through  life. 
The  taste  of  this  country,  too,  calls  for  this  accomplishment  more 
strongly  than  for  either  of  the  others. 

I  need  say  nothing  of  household  economy,  in  which  the 
mothers  of  our  country  are  "generally  skilled,  and  generally  care- 
ful to  instruct  their  daughters.  We  all  know  its  value,  and  that 
diligence  and  dexterity  in  all  its  processes  are  inestimable  treas- 
ures. The  order  and  economy  of  a  house  are  as  honorable  to  the 
mistress  as  those  of  the  farm  to  the  master,  and  if  either  be  neg- 
lected, ruin  follows,  and  children  destitute  of  the  means  of  living. 

This,  Sir,  is  oflFered  as  a  summary  sketch  on  a  subject  on  which 
I  have  not  thought  much.  It  probably  contains  nothing  but 
what  has  already  occurred  to  yourself,  and  claims  your  accept- 
ance on  no  other  groimd  than  as  a  testimony  of  my  respect  for 
yom-  wishes,  and  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoxTicELL",  Mnv  17,  ISIS. 

De.vb  Sir, — I  was  so  unfortunate  as  not  to  receive  from  Mi-. 
Holly's  own  hand  3^0 ur  favor  of  January  the  2Sth,  being  then  at 
my  other  home.  He  dined  only  with  my  family,  and  left  them 
with  an  impression  which  has  filled  me  with  regret  that  I  did  not 
partake  of  the  pleasure  his  visit  gave  them.  I  am  glad  he  is  gone 
to  Kentucky.  Rational  Christianity  will  thrive  more  rapidly 
there  than  here.  They  are  freer  from  prejudices  than  we  are, 
and  bolder  in  grasping  at  truth.     The  time  is  not  distant,  though 


104  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

neither  you  nor  I  shall  see  it,  when  we  shall  be  but  a  secondary 
people  to  them.  Our  greediness  for  wealth,  and  fantastical  ex- 
pense, have  degraded,  and  will  degrade,  the  minds  of  our  mari- 
time citizens.     These  are  the  peculiar  vices  of  commerce. 

I  had  been  long  without  hearing  from  you,  but  I  had  heard  of 
you  through  a  letter  from  Doctor  Waterhouse.  He  wrote  to  re- 
claim against  an  expression  of  Mr.  Wirt's,  as  to  the  commence- 
ment of  motion  in  the  revolutionary  ball.  The  lawyers  say  that 
words  are  always  to  be  expounded  secunduin  suhjectam  materiem, 
which,  in  Mr.  Wirt's  case,  was  Virginia.  It  would,  moreover,  be 
as  difficult  to  say  at  what  moment  the  Revolution  began,  and 
what  incident  set  it  in  motion,  as  to  fix  the  moment  that  the  em- 
bryo becomes  an  animal,  or  the  act  which  gives  him  a  beginning. 
But  the  most  agreeable  part  of  his  letter  was  that  which  informed 
me  of  your  health,  your  activity,  and  strength  of  memory  ;  and 
the  most  wonderful,  that  which  assured  me  that  you  retained 
your  industry  and  promptness  in  epistolary  correspondence. 
Here  you  have  entire  advantage  over  me.  My  repugnance  to 
the  writing  table  becomes  daily  and  hourly  more  deadly  and  in- 
surmountable. In  place  of  this  has  come  on  a  canine  appetite 
for  reading.  And  I  indulge  it,  because  I  see  in  it  a  relief  against 
the  tcedium  seneciutis  ;  a  lamp  to  lighten  my  path  througti  the 
dreary  wilderness  of  time  before  me,  whose  boiu'ne  I  see  not. 
Losing  daily  all  interest  in  the  things  around  us,  something  else 
is  necessary  to  fill  the  void.  With  me  it  is  reading,  which  occu- 
pies the  mind  without  the  labor  of  producing  ideas  from  my  own 
stock. 

I  enter  into  all  your  doubts  as  to  the  event  of  the  revolution  of 
South  America.  They  will  succeed  against  Spain.  But  the 
dangerous  enemy  is  within  their  own  breasts.  Ignorance  and  su- 
perstition will  chain  their  minds  and  bodies  under  religious  and 
military  despotism.  I  do  believe  it  would  be  better  for  tliem  to 
obtain  freedom  by  degrees  only  ;  because  that  would  by  degrees 
bring  on  light  and  information,  and  qualify  them  to  take  charge 
of  themselves  understandingly ;  with  more  certainty,  if  in  the 
meantime,  under  so  much  control  as  may  keep  them  at  peace 


COREESPOSDENCE.  105 

with  one  another.  Surely,  it  is  our  duty  to  wish  them  indepen- 
dence and  self-government,  because  they  wish  it  themselves, 
and  they  have  the  right,  and  we  none,  to  choose  for  themselves , 
and  I  wish,  moreover,  that  our  ideas  may  be  erroneous,  and  theirs 
prove  well  founded.  But  these  are  speculations,  my  friend,  which 
we  may  as  well  deliver  over  to  those  who  are  to  see  their  de- 
velopment. We  shall  only  be  lookers  on,  from  the  clouds 
above,  as  now  we  look  down  on  the  labors,  the  hurry  and  bustle 
of  the  ants  and  bees.  Perhaps  in  that  super-mundane  region,  we 
may  be  amused  with  seeing  the  fallacy  of  our  own  guesses,  and 
even  the  nothingness  of  those  labors  which  have  filled  and  agi- 
tated our  own  time  here. 

En  atte7idant,  with  sincere'  affections  to  Mrs.  Adams  and  your- 
self, I  salute  you  both  cordially. 


TO    M.    JULLIEN. 

MoNTiCELLo,  July  23,  1818. 

Sir, — Your  favor  of  March  30th,  1817,  came  to  my  hands  on 
the  1st  of  March,  1818.  While  the  statement  it  contained  of  the 
many  instances  of  your  attention  in  sending  to  me  your  diiierent 
writings  was  truly  flattering,  it  Avas  equally  mortifying  to  per- 
ceive that  two  only  of  the  eight  it  enumerates,  had  ever  come 
to  my  hands  ;  and  that  both  of  my  acknowledgments  of  these 
had  miscarried  also.  Your  first  favor  of  November  5th,  1809, 
was  received  by  me  on  the  6th  of  May,  1810,  and  was  an- 
swered on  the  15th  of  July  of  the  same  year,  with  an  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  receipt  of  your  ''  Essai  general  d^ education  phys- 
ique morale,  et  iiitellectuelle"  and  of  the  high  sense  I  entertained 
of  its  utility.  I  do  not  recollect  through  what  channel  I  sent 
this  answer,  but  have  little  doubt  that  it  was  through  the  office 
of  our  Secretary  of  State,  and  our  minister  then  at  the  court  of 
France. 

In  a  letter  from  Mr.  E.  I.  Dupont  of  August  11,  1817,  I  re- 
ceived the  favor  of  your  "  Esquisse  d'un  ouvrage  sur  I'educa- 


106  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

tioji  comparee,"  which  he  said  had  been  received  by  his  fathej 
a  few  days  before  his  death  ;  and  on  the  9th  of  September,  1817, 
I  answered  his  letter,  in  which  was  the  following  paragrapn  : 
"I  duly  received  tho  pamphlet  of  M.  Jullien  on  Education,  to 
whom  I  had  been  indebted  some  years  before  for  a  valuable  work 
on  the  same  subject.  Of  this  I  expressed  to  him  my  high  esti- 
mation in  a  letter  of  thanks,  which  I  trust  he  received.  The 
present  pamphlet  is  an  additional  proof  of  his  useful  assiduities 
on  this  interesting  subject,  which,  if  the  condition  of  man  is  to 
be  progressively  ameliorated,  as  we  fondly  hope  and  believe,  is 
to  be  the  chief  instrument  in  effecting  it."  I  hoped  that  Mr.  E. 
I.  Dupont,  in  acknowledging  to  you  the  receipt  of  your  letter  to 
his  father,  would  be  the  channel  of  conveying  to  you  my  thanks, 
as  he  was  to  me  of  the  work  for  which  they  were  rendered. 
Be  assured.  Sir,  that  not  another  scrip,  either  written  or  printed, 
ever  came  to  me  from  you ;  and  that  I  was  incapable  of  omitting 
the  acknowledgments  they  called  for,  and  of  the  neglect  which 
you  have  had  so  much  reason  to  impute  to  me.  I  know  well 
the  uncertainty  of  transmissions  across  the  Atlantic,  but  never 
before  experienced  such  a  train  of  them  as  has  taken  place  in 
your  favors  and  my  acknowledgments  of  them.  You  will  per- 
ceive that  the  letter  I  am  now  answering  was  eleven  months  on 
its  passage  to  me. 

The  distance  between  the  scenes  of  action  of  General  Kos- 
ciusko and  myself,  during  our  revolutionary  war, — his  in  the 
military,  mine  in  the  civil  department, — was  such,  that  I  could 
give  no  particulars  of  the  part  he  acted  in  that  war.  But  im- 
mediately on  the  receipt  of  your  letter,  I  wrote  to  General  Arm- 
strong, who  had  been  his  companion  in  arms,  and  an  aid  to  Gen- 
eral Gates,  with  whom  General  Kosciusko  mostly  seiwed,  and 
requested  him  to  give  me  all  the  details  within  his  knowledge  ; 
informing  him  for  whom,  and  for  what  purpose  they  were  asked. 
I  received,  two  days  ago  only,  the  paper  of  which  the  enclosed 
is  a  copy,  and  copied  by  myself,  because  the  original  is  in  such  a 
liandwritiug  as  I  am  confident  no  foreigner  could  ever  decypher. 
However  heavily  pressed  by  the  hand  of  age,  and  unequal  to  the 


OOEEESPONDENOE.  107 

duties  of  punctual  correspondence,  of  which  my  friends  generallj' 
would  have  a  right  to  complain,  if  the  cause  depended  on  myself, 
I  am  happy  to  find  that  in  that  with  yourself  there  has  been  no 
ground  of  reproach.  Least  of  all  things  could  I  have  omitted 
any  researches  within  my  power  which  might  do  justice  to  the 
memory  of  General  Kosciusko,  the  brave  auxiliary  of  my  country 
in  its  struggle  for  liberty,  and,  from  the  year  1797,  when  our 
particular  acquaintance  began,  my  most  intimate  and  much  be- 
loved friend.  On  his  last  departure  from  the  United  States  in 
1798,  he  left  in  my  hands  an  instrument  appropriating  after  his 
death  all  the  property  he  had  in  our  public  funds,  the  price  of 
his  military  services  here,  to  the  education  and  emancipation  of 
as  many  of  the  children  of  bondage  in  this  country  as  it  sliould 
be  adequate  to.  I  am  now  too  old  to  undertake  a  business  de  si 
longue  halcine ;  but  I  am  taking  measures  to  place  it  in  such 
hands  as  will  ensure  a  faithful  discharge  of  the  philanthropic  in- 
tentions of  the  donor.  I  learn  with  pleasure  your  continued  ef- 
forts for  the  instruction  of  the  future  generations  of  men,  and,  be- 
lieving it  the  only  means  of  effectuating  their  rights,  I  wish  them 
all  possible  success,  and  to  yourself  the  eternal  gratitude  of  those 
who  will  feel  their  benefits,  and  beg  leave  to  add  the  assm-ance 
of  my  high  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

?Iontk:ki.lo,  November  13,  1818. 

The  public  papers,  my  dear  friend,  announce  the  fatal  event 
of  which  your  letter  of  October  the  20th  had  given  me  ominous 
foreboding.  Tried  myself  in  the  school  of  affliction,  by  the  loss 
of  every  form  of  connection  which  can  rive  the  human  heart,  I 
Know  well,  and  feel  what  you  have  lost,  what  you  have  suffered, 
are  suffering,  and  have  yet  to  endure.  The  same  trials  have 
taught  me  that  for  ills  so  immeasurable,  time  and  silence  are  the 
only  medicine.  I  will  not,  therefore,  by  useless  condolences, 
open  afresh  the  sluices  of  your  grief,  nor,  although  mingling  sin- 


108  JEFfEESON'S    WORKS. 

ceiely  my  tears  with  yours,  will  I  say  a  word  more  where  words 
are  vain,  but  that  it  is  of  some  comfort  to  us  both,  that  the  term 
is  not  very  distant,  at  which  we  are  to  deposit  in  the  same  cere- 
ment, our  sorrows  and  suffering  bodies,  and  to  ascend  in  essence 
to  an  ecstatic  meeting  with  the  friends  we  have  loved  and  lost, 
and  whom  we  shall  still  love  and  never  lose  again.  God  bless 
you  and  support  you  under  your  heavy  affliction. 


TO    EOBEKT    WALSH. 

MoNTiOKLi.o,  December  4,  1818. 

Deae  Sir, — Yours  of  November  the  8th  has  been  some  time 
received  ;  but  it  is  in  my  power  to  give  little  satisfaction  as  to  its 
inquiries.  Dr.  Franklin  had  many  political  enemies,  as  every 
character  must,  which,  with  decision  enough  to  have  opinions, 
has  energy  and  talent  to  give  them  effect  on  the  feelings  of  the 
adversary  opinion.  These  enmities  were  chiefly  in  Pennsylvania 
and  Massachusetts.  In  the  former,  they  were  merely  of  the  pro- 
prietary party.  In  the  latter,  they  did  not  commence  till  the 
Revolution,  and  then  sprung  chiefly  from  personal  animosities, 
which  spreading  by  little  and  little,  became  at  length  of  some 
extent.  Dr.  Lee  was  his  principal  calumniator,  a  man  of  much 
malignity,  who,  besides  enlisting  his  whole  family  in  the  same 
hostility,  was  enabled,  as  the  agent  of  Massachusetts  with  the 
British  government,  to  infuse  it  into  that  State  with  considera- 
ble effect.  Mr.  Izard,  the  Doctor's  enemy  also,  but  from  a  pe- 
cuniary transaction,  never  countenanced  these  charges  against 
him.  Mr.  Jay,  Silas  Deane,  Mr.  Laurens,  his  colleagues  also,  ever 
maintained  towards  him  unlimited  confidence  and  respect.  That 
he  would  have  waived  the  formal  recognition  of  our  indepen- 
dence, I  never  heard  on  any  authority  worthy  notice.  As  to  the 
fisheries  England  was  urgent  to  retain  them  exclusively,  France 
neutral,  and  I  believe,  that  had  they  been  ultimately  made  a 
sine  qu  >  no7i,  our  commissioners  (Mr.  Adams  excepted)  would 
hav(;  relinquished  them,  rather  than  have  broken  off  the  treaty. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  109 

To  Mr.  Adams'  perseverance  alone,  on  that  point,  I  have  always 
understood  we  were  indebted  for  their  reservation.  As  to  the 
charge  of  subservience  to  France,  besides  the  evidence  of  his 
friendly  colleagues  before  named,  two  years  of  my  own  service 
with  him  at  Paris,  daily  visits,  and  the  most  friendly  and  confi- 
dential conversation,  convince  me  it  had  not  a  shadow  of  foun- 
dation. He  possessed  the  confidence  of  that  government  in  the 
highest  degree,  insomuch,  that  it  may  truly  be  said,  that  they 
were  more  under  his  influence,  than  he  under  theirs.  The  fact 
is,  that  his  temper  was  so  amiable  and  conciliatory,  his  conduct 
so  rational,  never  urging  impossibilities,  or  even  things  unreason- 
ably inconvenient  to  them,  in  short,  so  moderate  and  attentive  to 
their  difficulties,  as  well  as  our  own,  that  what  his  enemies  called 
subserviency,  I  saw  was  only  that  reasonable  disposition,  which, 
sensible  that  advantages  are  not  all  to  be  on  one  side,  yielding 
what  is  just  and  liberal,  is  the  more  certain  of  obtaining  liberality 
and  justice.  Mutual  confidence  produces,  of  course,  mutual  in- 
fluence, and  this  was  all  which  subsisted  between  Dr.  Franklin 
and  the  government  of  France. 

I  state  a  few  anecdotes  of  Dr.  Franklin,  within  my  own 
knowledge,  too  much  in  detail  for  the  scale  of  Delaplaine's  work, 
but  which  may  find  a  cadre  in  some  of  the  more  particular  views 
you  contemplate.  My  health  is  in  a  great  measure  restored,  and 
our  family  join  with  me  in  afl'ectionate  recollections  and  assur- 
ances of  respect. 


TO    M.    DE    KEUVILLE. 

MoxTict-LLO,  December  13,  1818. 

I  thank  your  Excellency  for  the  notice  with  which  your  let- 
ters favor  me,  of  the  liberation  of  France  from  the  occupation 
of  the  allied  powers.  To  no  one,  not  a  native,  will  it  give  more 
pleasure.  In  the  desolation  of  Europe,  to  gratify  the  atrocious 
caprices  of  Bonaparte,  France  sinned  much  ;  but  she  has  sufi"er- 
ed  more  than  retaliation.     Once  relieved  from  the  incubus  of  her 


110  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

late  oppression,  she  will  rise  like  a  giant  from  her  slumbers.  Hei 
soil  and  climate,  her  arts  and  eminent  sciences,  her  central  posi- 
tion and  free  constitution,  will  soon  make  her  greater  than  she 
ever  was.  And  I  am  a  false  prophet,  if  she  does  not  at  some  fu- 
ture dsLj,  remind  of  her  sufferings  those  who  have  inflicted  them 
the  most  eagerly.  I  hope,  however,  she  will  be  quiet  for  the 
present,  and  risk  no  new  troubles.  Her  constitution,  as  now 
amended,  gives  as  much  of  self-government  as  perhaps  she  can 
yet  bear,  and  will  give  more,  when  the  habits  of  order  shall  have 
prepared  her  to  receive  more.  Besides  the  gratitude  which  every 
American  owes  her,  as  our  sole  ally  during  the  war  of  indepen- 
dence, I  am  additionally  affectioned  by  the  friendships  I  contract- 
ed there,  by  the  good  dispositions  I  witnessed,  and  by  the  courte- 
sies I  received. 

I  rejoice,  as  a  moralist,  at  the  prospect  of  a  reduction  of  the 
duties  on  wine,  by  our  national  legislature.  It  is  an  error  to  view 
a  tax  on  that  liquor  as  merely  a  tax  on  the  rich.  It  is  a  prohibi- 
tion of  its  use  to  the  middling  class  of  our  citizens,  and  a  con- 
demnation of  them  to  the  poison  of  whiskey,  which  is  desolating 
their  houses.  No  nation  is  drunken  where  wine  is  cheap ;  and 
none  sober,  where  the  dearness  of  wine  substitutes  ardent  spirits 
as  the  common  beverage.  It  is,  in  truth,  the  only  antidote  to  the 
bane  of  whiskey.  Fix  but  the  duty  at  the  rate  of  other  mer- 
chandise, and  we  can  drink  wine  here  as  cheap  as  we  do  grog  ; 
and  who  will  not  prefer  it  ?  Its  extended  use  will  carry  health 
and  comfort  to  a  much  enlarged  circle.  Every  one  in  easy  cir- 
cumstances (as  the  bulk  of  our  citizens  are)  will  prefer  it  to  the 
poison  to  which  they  are  now  driven  by  their  government.  And 
the  treasury  itself  will  find  that  a  penny  a  piece  from  a  dozen,  is 
more  than  a  groat  from  a  single  one.  This  reformation,  how- 
ever, will  require  time.  Our  merchants  know  nothing  of  the  in- 
finite variety  of  cheap  and  good  wines  to  be  had  in  Europe  ; 
and  particularly  in  France,  in  Italy,  and  the  Graecian  islands  ;  as 
they  know  little  also,  of  the  variety  of  excellent  manufacture's 
and  comforts  to  be  had  anywhere  out  of  England.  Nor  will 
these  things  be  known,  nor  of  course  called  for  here,  until  the 


CORRESPONDENCE.  HI 

native  merchants  of  those  countries,  to  whom  they  are  known, 
shall  bring  them  forward,  exhibit  and  vend  them  at  the  moderate 
profits  they  can  afford.  This  alone  will  procure  them  familiarity 
with  us,  and  the  preference  they  merit  in  competition  with  corre- 
sponding articles  now  in  use . 

Our  family  renew  with  pleasure  their  recollections  of  your 
kind  visit  to  Monticello,  and  join  me  in  tendering  sincere  assur- 
ances of  the  gratification  it  afforded  us,  and  of  our  great  esteem 
and  respectful  consideration. 


TO    NATHANIEL    MACON,  ESq. 

iloxTicKLi.o,  January  12,  1819. 

Deab  Sib, — The  problem  you  had  wished  to  propose  to  me 
Vv'as  one  which  I  could  not  have  solved  ;  for  I  knew  nothing  of 
the  facts.  I  read  no  newspaper  now  but  Ritchie's,  and  in  that 
chiefly  the  advertisments,  for  they  contain  the  only  truths  to  be 
relied  on  in  a  newspaper.  -I  feel  a  much  greater  interest  in  know- 
mg  wiiat  has  passed  two  or  three  thousand  years  ago,  than  in 
what  is  now  passing.  I  read  nothing,  therefore,  but  of  the  heroes 
of  Troy,  of  the  wars  of  Lacedasmon  and  Athens,  of  Pompey  and 
Cajsar,  and  of  Augustus  too,  the  Bonaparte  and  parricide  scoun- 
drel of  that  day.  I  have  had,  and  still  have,  such  entire  confi- 
dence in  the  late  and  present  Presidents,  that  I  willingly  put  both 
soul  and  body  into  their  pockets.  While  such  men  as  yourself 
and  your  worthy  colleagues  of  the  legislature,  and  such  characters 
as  compose  the  executive  administration,  are  watching  for  us  all, 
I  slumber  without  fear,  and  review  in  my  dreams  the  visions  of 
antiquity.  There  is,  indeed,  one  evil  which  awakens  me  at 
times,  becaust  it  jostles  me  at  every  tm-n.  It  is  that  we  have 
now  no  measure  of  value.  I  am  asked  eighteen  dollars  for  a 
yard  of  broadcloth,  which,  when  we  had  dollars,  I  used  to  get 
for  eighteen  shillings ;  from  this  I  can  only  understand  that  a  dol- 
lar is  now  worth  fiut  two  inches  of  broadcloth,  but  broadcloth 
is  no  standard  of  measure  or  value.     I  do  not  know,  therefore, 


112  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

whereabouts  I  stand  in  the  scale  of  property,  nor  what  to  ask,  or 
what  tQ  give  for  it.  I  saw,  indeed,  the  like  machinery  in  action 
in  the  years  '80  and  '81,  and  without  dissatisfaction ;  because  in 
wearing  out,  it  was  working  out  our  salvation.  But  I  see  no- 
thing in  this  renewal  of  the  game  of  "  Robin's  alive"  but  a  gene- 
ral demoralization  of  the  nation,  a  filching  from  industry  its  hon- 
est earnings,  wherewith  to  build  up  palaces,  and  raise  gambling 
stock  for  swindlers  and  shavers,  who  are  to  close  too  their  career 
of  piracies  by  Iraudulent  bankruptcies.  My  dependence  for  a 
remedy,  however,  is  with  the  wisdom  which  grows  with  time  and 
suffering.  Whether  the  succeeding  generation  is  to  be  more  vir- 
tuous than  their  predecessors,  I  cannot  say  ;  but  I  am  sure  they 
will  have  more  worldly  wisdom,  and  enough,  I  hope,  to  know 
that  honesty  is  the  first  chapter  in  the  book  of  wisdom.  I  have 
made  a  great  exertion  to  write  you  thus  much  ;  my  antipathy  to 
taking  up  a  pen  being  so  intense  that  I  have  never  given  you  a 
stronger  proof,  than  in  the  effort  of  writing  a  letter,  how  much  I 
value  you,  and  of  the  superlative  respect  and  friendship  with 
which  I  salute  you. 


TO    MB.    ADAMS. 

MuNTiCKLi.o,  Marcli  21,  1819. 

Dear  Sm, — I  am  indebted  to  you  for  Mr.  Bowditch's  very 
learned  mathematical  papers,  the  calculations  of  which  are  not 
for  every  reader,  although  their  results  are  readily  enough  under- 
stood. One  of  these  impairs  the  confidence  I  had  reposed  in  La 
Place's  demonstration,  that  the  eccentricities  of  the  planets  of  our 
system  could  oscillate  only  within  narrow  limits,  and  therefore 
could  authorize  no  inference  that  the  system  must,  by  its  own 
laws,  come  one  day  to  an  end.  This  would  have  left  the  ques- 
tion one  of  infinitude,  at  both  ends  of  the  line  of  time,  clear  of 
physical  authority. 

Mr.  Pickering's  pamphlet  on  the  pronunciation  of  the  Greek, 
for  which  I  am  indebted  to  you  also,  I  have  read  with  great 
pleasure.     Early  in  life,  the  idea  occurred  to  me  that  the  people 


CORRESPONDENCE.  113 

now  inhabiting  the  ancient  seats  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans, 
although  their  languages  in  the  intermediate  ages  had  suffered 
great  changes,  and  especially  in  the  declension  of  their  nouns, 
and  in  the  terminations  of  their  words  generally,  yet  having  pre- 
served the  body  of  the  word  radically  the  same,  so  they  would 
preserve  more  of  its  pronunciation.  That  at  least  it  was  prob- 
able that  a  pronunciation,  handed  down  by  tradition,  would  re- 
tain ,  as  the  words  themselves  do,  more  of  the  original  than  that 
of  any  other  people  whose  language  has  no  affinity  to  that  origi- 
nal. For  this  reason  I  learnt,  and  have  used  the  Italian  pronun- 
ciation of  the  Latin.  But  that  of  the  modern  Greeks  I  had  no 
opportunity  of  learning  until  I  went  to  Paris.  There  I  became 
acquainted  with  two  learned  Greeks,  Count  Carberri  and  Mr. 
Paradise,  and  with  a  lady,  a  native  Greek,  the  daughter  of  Baron 
de  Tott,  who  did  not  understand  the  ancient  language.  Carberri 
and  Paradise  spoke  it.  From  these  instructors  I  learnt  the  mod- 
ern pronunciation,  and  in  general  trusted  to  its  orthodoxy.  I  say, 
in  general,  because  sound  being  more  fugitive  than  the  written 
letter,  we  must,  after  such  a  lapse  of  time,  presume  in  it  some  de- 
generacies, as  we  see  there  are  in  the  written  words.  We  may 
not,  indeed,  be  able  to  put  our  finger  on  them  confidently,  yet 
neither  are  they  entirely  beyond  the  reach  of  all  indication.  For 
example,  in  a  language  so  remarkable  for  the  euphony  of  its 
sounds,  if  that  euphony  is  preserved  in  particular  combinations 
of  its  letters,  by  an  adherence  to  the  powers  ordinarily  ascribed 
to  them,  and  is  destroyed  by  a  change  of  these  powers,  and  the 
sound  of  the  word  thereby  rendered  harsh,  inharrnonious,  and 
inidiomatical,  here  we  may  presume  some  degeneracy  has  taken 
place.  While,  therefore,  I  gave  in  to  the  modern  pronunciation 
generally,  I  have  presumed,  as  au  instance  of  degeneracy,  their 
ascribing  the  same  sound  to  the  six  letters,  or  combinations  of 
letters,  e,  »,  u,  ei,  oi,  ut,  to  all  of  which  they  give  the  sound  of 
our  double  e  in  the  word  meet.  This  useless  equivalence  of 
three  vowels  and  three  diphthongs,  did  not  probably  exist  among 
the  ancient  Greeks ;  and  the  less  probably  as,  while  this  single 
sound,  ee,  is    overcharged   by  so  many  different  representative 

VOL.  v.  S 


114  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

characters,  the  sounds  we  usually  give  to  these  characters  and 
combinations  would  be  left  without  any  representative  signs. 
This  would  imply  either  that  they  had  not  these  sounds  in  their 
language,  or  no  signs  for  their  expression.  Probability  appears 
to  me,  therefore,  against  the  practice  of  the  modern  Greeks  of 
giving  the  same  sound  to  all  these  different  representatives,  and 
to  be  in  favor  of  that  of  foreign  nations,  who,  adopting  the 
Roman  characters,  have  assimilated  to  them,  in  a  considerable 
degree,  the  powers  of  the  corresponding  Greek  letters.  I  have, 
accordingly,  excepted  this  in  my  adoption,  of  the  modern  pronun- 
ciation. I  have  been  more  doubtful  in  the  use  of  the  uv,  ev,  t;., 
wi',  sounding  the  .,  upsilon,  as  our /or  v,  because  I  find  traces  of 
that  power  of  v,  or  of  u,  in  some  modern  languages.  To  go  no 
further  than  our  own,  we  have  it  in  laugh,  cough,  trough,  enough. 
The  county  of  Louisa,  adjacent  to  that  in  which  I  live,  was, 
when  I  was  a  boy,  universally  pronounced  Lovisa.  That  it  is 
not  the  gh  which  gives  the  sound  of  /  or  v,  in  these  words,  is 
proved  by  the  orthography  oi plough,  ti'ough,  thought,  fraught, 
caught.  The  modern  Greeks  themselves,  too,  giving  up  o,  up- 
silon, in  ordinary,  the  sound  of  our  ee,  strengthens  the  presump- 
tion that  its  anomalous  sound  of  /  or  v,  is  a  corruption.  The 
same  may  be  inferred  from  the  cacophony  of  tluqu't  (elavnej  for 
thtvvf,  (elawne,)  .-/xdli-cfg  (Achillefs)  for  J/jlleig,  (Achilleise,) 
f(f;  (eves)  for  fi;,,  (eeuse,)  oqx  (ovk)  for  yx,  (ouk,)  uKfio^  (ovetos) 
for  ixivioc,  (o-u-tos,)  2>(jrs  (zevs)  for  Shvg,  (zese,)  of  which  all  nations 
have  made  their  Jupiter ;  and  the  uselessness  of  the  v  in  evq.ufut, 
which  would  otherwise  have  been  spelt  tcpoi^io.  I  therefore  except 
this  also  from  what  I  consider  as  approvable  pronunciation. 

Against  reading  Greek  by  accent,  instead  of  quantity,  as  Mr 
Ciceitira  proposes,  I  raise  both  my  hands.  What  becomes  of  the 
sublime  measure  of  Homer,  the  full  sounding  rhythm  of  Demos- 
thenes, if,  abandoning  quantity,  you  chop  it  up  by  accent  ?  What 
ear  can  hesitate  in  its  choice  between  the  two  following  rythms  ? 

"  Tdv,  6'aiTa/j.et6d/ievoc:  ^pogefT)  ■KO&a^  anvg  A;i;iAAet)f, 

and, 

Tov  d'a-rr/iei6o/ievdi  npoietj)!)  noSa;  ux^i  Xx'tMirvf," 


COEKESPOXDEXCE.  115 

the  latter  noted  according  to  prosody,  the  former  by  accent,  ind 
dislocating  our  teeth  in  its  utterance  :  every  syllable  of  it,  except 
the  first  and  last,  being  pronounced  against  quantity  And  what 
becomes  of  the  art  of  prosody  ?  Is  that  perfect  coincidence  of 
its  rules  vvith  the  structure  of  their  verse,  merely  accidental '  or 
was  it  of  design,  and  yet  for  no  use. 

On  the  whole,  I  rejoice  that  this  subject  is  taken  up  among 
us,  and  that  it  is  in.  so  able  hands  as  those  of  it.  Pickering. 
Should  he  ultimately  establish  the  modern  pronunciation  of  the 
letters  without  any  exception,  I  shall  think  it  a  great  step  gained, 
and  giving  up  my  exceptions,  shall  willingly  raUy  to  him  ;  and 
as  he  has  promised  us  another  paper  on  the  question  whether  we 
shall  read  by  quantity  or  by  accent,  I  can  confidently'  trust  it  to  the 
correctness  of  his  learning  and  judgment.  Of  the  origin  of  ac- 
centuation, I  have  never  seen  satisfactory  proofs.  But  I  have 
generally  supposed  the  accents  were  intended  to  direct  the  in- 
flections and  modulations  of  the  voice  ;  but  not  to  affect  the 
quantity  of  the  syllables.  You  did  not  expect,  I  am  sure,  to 
draw  on  yourself  so  long  a  disquisition  on  letters  and  sounds,  nor 
did  I  intend  it,  but  the  subject  run  before  me,  and  yet  I  have 
dropped  much  of  it  by  the  way. 

I  am  dehghted  with  youi  high  approbation  of  ]\Ir.  Tracy's 
book.  The  evils  of  this  deluge  of  paper  money  are  not  to  be  re- 
moved, until  our  citizens  are  generally  and  radically  instructed 
in  their  cause  and  consequences,  and  silence  by  their  authority 
the  interested  clamors  and  sophistry  of  speculating,  shaving,  and 
banking  institutions.  Till  then  we  must  be  content  to  return, 
quoad  hoc,  to  the  savage  state,  to  recur  to  barter  in  the  exchange 
of  our  property,  for  want  of  a  stable,  common  measure  of  value, 
that  now  in  use  being  less  fixed  than  the  beads  and  wampum  of 
the  Indian,  and  to  dehver  up  our  citizens,  their  property  and  their 
labor,  passive  victims  to  the  swindling  tricks  of  bankers  and 
mountebankers.  If  I  had  your  permission  to  put  your  letter  into 
the  hands  of  the  editor,  (ililUgan,)  with  or  without  any  verbal  alter- 
ations 5'ou  might  choose,  it  would  ensure  the  general  circulation, 
which  my  prospectus  and  prefatory  letter  will  less  effectually  rec- 


116  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

ommend.  There  is  nothing  in  the  book  of  mine  but  these  two 
articles,  and  the  note  on  taxation  in  page  202.  '  I  never  knew 
who  the  translator  was  ;  but  I  thought  him  some  one  who  under- 
stood neither  French  nor  English  ;  and  probably  a  Caledonian,  , 
from  the  number  of  Scotticisms  I  found  in  his  MS.  The  in- 
numerable corrections  in  that,  cost  me  more  labor  than  would 
have  done  a  translation  of  the  whole  de  novo  ;  and  made  at  last 
but  an  inelegant  although  faithful  version  of  the  sense  of  the 
author.     Dios  guarde  a  V.  S.  muchos  anos. 


TO    DOCTOR   VINE    UTLET. 

Monti  CELLO,  March  21,  1819 

Sir, — ^Your  letter  of  February  the  18th  came  to  hand  on  the 
1st  instant ;  and  the  request  of  the  history  of  my  physical  habits 
would  have  puzzled  me  not  a  little,  had  it  not  been  for  the  model 
with  which  you  accompanied  it,  of  Doctor  Rush's  answer  to  a 
similar  inquiry.  I  live  so  much  like  other  people,  that  I  might 
refer  to  ordinary  life  as  the  history  of  my  own.  Like  my  friend 
the  Doctor,  I  have  lived  temperately,  eating  little  animal  food, 
and  that  not  as  an  aliment,  so  much  as  a  condiment  for  the  vege- 
tables, which  constitute  my  principal  diet.  I  double,  however, 
the  Doctor's  glass  and  a  half  of  wine,  and  even  treble  it  with  a 
friend ;  but  halve  its  effects  by  drinking  the  weak  wines  only. 
The  ardent  wines  I  cannot  drink,  nor  do  I  use  ardent  spirits  in 
any  form.  Malt  liquors  and  cider  are  my  table  drinks,  and  my 
breakfast,  like  that  also  of  my  friend,  is  of  tea  and  coffee.  I 
have  been  blest  with  organs  of  digestion  which  accept  and  con- 
coct, "Without  ever  murmuring,  whatever  the  palate  chooses  to 
consign  to  them,  and  I  have  not  yet  lost  a  tooth  by  age.  I  was 
a  hard  student  until  I  entered  on  the  business  of  life,  the  duties 
of  which  leave  no  idle  time  to  those  disposed  to  fulfil  them ;  and 
now,  retired,  and  at  the  age  of  seventy-six,  I  am  again  a  hard 
student.  Indeed,  my  fondness  for  reading  and  study  revolts  me 
from  the  drudgery  of  letter  writing.     And  a  stiff  wrist,  the  con- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  117 

sequence  ot  an  early  dislocation,  makes  writing  both  slow  and 
nainful.  I  am  not  so  regular  in  my  sleep  as  the  Doctor  says  he 
was,  devoting  to  it  from  five  to  eight  hours,  according  as  m^' 
company  or  the  book  I  am  reading  interests  me  ;  and  I  never  go 
to  bed  without  an  hour,  or  half  hour's  previous  reading  of  some- 
thing moral,  whereon  to  ruminate  in  the  intervals  of  sleep.  But 
whether  I  retire  to  bed  early  or  late,  I  rise  with  the  sun.  I  use 
spectacles  at  night,  but  not  necessarily  in  the  day,  unless  in  read- 
ing small  print.  My  hearing  is  distinct  in  particular  conversa- 
tion, but  confused  when  several  voices  cross  each  other,  which 
unfits  me  for  the  society  of  the  table.  I  have  been  more  fortu- 
nate than  my  friend  in  the  article  of  health.  So  free  from 
catarrhs  that  I  have  not  had  one,  (in  the  breast,  I  mean)  on  an 
average  of  eight  or  ten  years  through  life.  I  ascribe  this  ex- 
emption partly  to  the  habit  of  bathing  my  feet  in  cold  water 
every  morning,  for  sixty  years  past.  A  fever  of  more  than  twen- 
ty-four hours  I  have  not  had  above  two  or  three  times  in  my  life. 
A  periodical  headache  has  afflicted  me  occasionally,  once,  per- 
haps, in  six  or  eight  years,  for  two  or  three  weeks  at  a  time, 
which  seems  now  to  have  left  me  ;  and  except  on  a  late  occa- 
sion of  indisposition,  I  enjoy  good  health  ;  too  feeble,  indeed,  to 
walk  much,  but  riding  without  fatigue  six  or  eight  miles  a  day, 
and  sometimes  thirty  or  forty.  I  may  end  these  egotisms,  there- 
fore, as  I  began,  by  saying  that  my  life  has  been  so  much  like 
that  of  other  people,  that  1  might  say  with  Horace,  to  every  one 
"  nomine  miitato,  narratur  fahula  de  te."  I  must  not  end,  how- 
ever, without  due  thanks  for  the  kind  sentiments  of  regard  you 
are  so  good  as  to  express  towards  myself:  and  with  my  acknowl- 
edgments for  these,  be  pleased  to  accept  the  assurances  of  my 
respect  and  esteem. 


TU    MR.     SPATFORD. 

MoNiicELLO,  May  11,  1819. 

Dear  Sir, — The  interest  on  the  late  derangement  of  my  health 
which  was  so  kindly  expressed  by  many,  could  not  but  be  grati- 


118  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

fying  to  me,  as  much  as  it  manifested  a  sentiment  that  I  had  not 
been  merely  an  useless  cypher  of  society.  Yet  a  decline  of  health 
at  the  age  of  76,  was  naturally  to  be  expected,  and  is  a  warning 
of  an  event  which  cannot  be  distant,  and  whose  approach  I  con- 
template with  little  concern  ;  for  indeed,  in  no  circumstance  has 
nature  been  kinder  to  us,  than  in  the  soft  gradations  by  which 
she  prepares  us  to  part  willingly  with  what  we  are  not  destined 
always  to  retain.  First  one  faculty  is  withdrawn  and  then  an- 
other, sight,  hearing,  memory,  affections,  and  friends,  filched  one 
by  one,  till  we  are  left  among  strangers,  the  mere  monuments  of 
times,  facts,  and  specimens  of  antiquity  for  the  observation  of  the 
curious. 

To  your  request  of  materials  for  writing  my  life,  I  know  not 
what  to  say,  although  I  have  been  obliged  to  say  something  to 
several  preceding  applications  of  the  same  kind.  One  answer  in- 
deed is  obviouS;  that  I  am  by  decay  of  memory,  aversion  to  la- 
bor, and  cares  more  suited  to  my  situation,  unequal  to  such  a 
task.  Of  the  public  transactions  in  which  I  have  borne  a  part,  I 
have  kept  no  narrative  with  a  view  of  history.  A  life  of  con- 
stant action  leaves  no  time  for  recording.  Always  thinking  of 
what  is  next  to  be  done,  what  has  been  done  is  dismissed,  and 
soon  obliterated  from  the  memory.  I  cannot  be  insensible  to  the 
partiality  which  has  induced  several  persons  to  think  my  life 
worthy  of  remembrance.  And  towards  none  more  than  yourself, 
who  give  me  so  much  credit  more  than  I  am  entitled  to,  as  to 
what  has  been  effected  for  the  safeguard  of  our  republican  con- 
stitution. Numerous  and  able  coadjutors  have  participated  in 
these  efforts,  and  merit  equal  notice.  My  life,  in  fact,  has  been 
so  much  like  that  of  others,  that  their  history  is  my  history,  with 
a  mere  difference  of  feature.  The  only  valuable  materials  for 
history  which  I  possessed,  were  the  pamphlets  of  the  day,  care- 
fully collected  and  preserved ;  but  these  past  on  to  Congress  with 
my  library,  and  are  to  be  found  in  their  depository.  Except  the 
Notes  on  Virginia,  I  never  wrote  anything  but  acts  of  office,  of 
which  I  rarely  kept  a  copy.  These  will  all  be  found  in  the 
journals  and  gazettes  of  the  times.    There  was  a  book  published 


CORRESPONDENCE.  119 

in  England  about  1801,  or  soon  after,  entitled  "Public  Charac- 
ters," in  which  was  given  a  sketch  of  my  nistory  to  that  period. 
I  never  knew,  nor  could  conjecture  by  whom  this  was  written  ; 
but  certainly  by  some  one  pretty  intimately  acquainted  with  my- 
self and  my  connections.  There  were  a  few  inconsiderable 
errors  in  it,  but  in  general  it  was  correct.  Delaplaine,  in  his  Re- 
pository, has  also  given  some  outlines  on  the  same  subject ;  he 
sets  out  indeed  with  an  error  as  to  the  county  of  my  birth. 
Chesterfield,  which  he  states  as  such,  was  the  residence  of  my 
grandfather  and  remoter  ancestors,  but  Albemarle  was  that  of 
my  father,  and  of  my  own  birth  and  residence.  Excepting  this 
error,  I  remark  no  other  but  in  his  ascriptions  of  more  merit  than 
I  have  deserved.  Girardin's  History  of  Virginia,  too,  gives  many 
particulars  on  the  same  subject,  which  are  correct.  These  pub- 
lications furnish  all  the  details  of  facts  and  dates  which  can  in- 
terest anybody,  and  more  than  I  could  now  furnish  myself  from 
a  decayed  memory,  or  any  notes  I  retain.  While,  therefore,  I 
feel  just  acknowledgments  for  the  partial  selection  of  a  subject 
for  your  employment,  I  am  persuaded  you  will  perceive  there  is 
too  little  new  and  worthy  of  public  notice  to  devote  to  it  a  time 
which  may  be  so  much  more  usefully  employed  ;  and  with  a  due 
sense  of  the  partiality  of  your  friendship,  I  salute  you  with  assur- 
ances of  the  greatest  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    S.    A.    WELLS,    ESQ. 

MoNTicELLO,  May  12,  1819. 

SiE, — An  absence  of  some  time  at  an  occasional  and  distant 
residence  must  apologize  for  the  delay  in  acknowledging  the  re- 
ceipt of  your  favor  of  April  12th.  And  candor  obliges  me  to  add 
that  it  has  been  somewhat  extended  by  an  aversion  to  writing, 
,as  well  as  to  calls  on  my  memory  for  facts  so  much  obliterated 
from  it  by  time  as  to  lessen  my  confidence  in  the  traces  which 
seem  to  remain.  One  of  the  inquiries  in  your  letter,  however, 
may  be  answered  without  an  apjieal  to  the  memory.     It  is  that 


120  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

respecting  the  question  whether  committees  of  correspondence 
originated  in  Virginia  or  Massachusetts  ?  On  which  you  suppose 
me  to  have  claimed  it  for  Virginia.  But  certainly  I  have  never 
made  such  a  claim.  The  idea,  I  suppose,  has  been  taken  up 
from  what  is  said  in  Wirt's  history  of  Mr.  Henry,  p.  87,  and  from 
an  inexact  attention  to  its  precise  terms.  It  is  there  said  "  this 
house  [of  burgesses  of  Virginia]  had  the  merit  of  originating  that 
powerful  engine  of  resistance,  corresponding  committees  between 
the  legislatures  of  the  different  colonies."  That  the  fact  as  here 
expressed  is  true,  your  letter  bears  witness  when  it  says  that 
the  resolutions  of  Virginia  for  this  purpose  were  transmitted 
to  the  speakers  of  the  different  Assemblies,  and  by  that  of  Massa- 
chusetts was  laid  at  the  next  session  before  that  body,  who  ap- 
pointed a  committee  for  the  specified  object :  adding,  "  thus  in 
Massachusetts  there  were  two  committees  of  correspondence,  one 
chosen  by  the  people,  the  other  appointed  by  the  House  of  As- 
sembly ;  in  the  former,  Massachusetts  preceded  Virginia ;  in  the 
latter,  Virginia  preceded  Massachusetts."  To  the  origination  of 
committees  for  the  interior  correspondence  between  the  counties 
and  towns  of  a  State,  I  know  of  no  claim  on  the  part  of  Virginia  ; 
but  certainly  none  was  ever  made  by  myself.  I  perceive,  how- 
ever, one  error  into  which  memory  had  led  me.  Our  committee 
for  national  correspondence  was  appointed  in  March,  '73,  and  I 
well  remember  that  going  to  Williamsburg  in  the  month  of  June 
following,  Peyton  Randolph,  om-  chairman,  told  me  that  mes- 
sengers, bearing  despatches  between  the  two  States,  had  crossed 
each  other  by  the  way  ;  that  of  Virginia  carrying  our  propositions 
for  a  committee  of  national  correspondence,  and  that  of  Massa- 
chusetts bringing,  as  my  memory  suggested,  a  similar  proposi- 
tion. But  here  I  must  have  misremembered  ;  and  the  resolutions 
brought  us  from  Massachusetts  were  probably  those  you  mention 
of  the  town  meeting  of  Boston,  on  the  motion  of  Mr.  Samuel 
Adams,  appointing  a  committee  "  to  state  the  rights  of  the  colo- 
nists, and  of  that  province  in  particular,  and  the  infringements 
of  them,  to  communicate  them  to  the  several  towns,  as  the  sense 
of  the  town  of  Boston,  and  to  request  of  each  town  a  free  com- 


COREESPONDENOE.  121 

munication  of  its  sentiments  on  this  subject"  ?  I  suppose,  there- 
fore, that  these  resohitions  were  not  received,  as  you  think,  while 
the  House  of  Burgesses  was  in  session  in  March,  1773  ;  but  a  fev. 
days  after  we  rose,  and  were  probably  what  was  sent  by  the 
messenger  who  crossed  ours  by  the  way.  They  may,  however, 
have  been  still  different.  I  must  therefore  have  been  mistaken  in 
supposing  and  stating  to  Mr.  Wirt,  that  the  proposition  of  a  com- 
mittee for  national  correspondence  was  nearly  simultaneous  in 
Virginia  and  Massachusetts. 

A  similar  misapprehension  of  another  passage  in  Mr.  Wirt's 
book,  for  which  I  am  also  quoted,  has  produced  a  similar  reclam- 
ation of  the  part  of  Massachusetts  by  some  of  her  most  distin- 
guished and  estimable  citizens.  I  had  been  applied  to  by  Mr. 
Wirt  for  such  facts  respecting  Mr.  Henry,  as  my  intimacy  with 
him,  and  participation  in  the  transactions  of  the  day,  might  have 
placed  within  my  knowledge.  I  accordingly  committed  them 
to  paper,  and  Virginia  being  the  theatre  of  his  action,  was  the 
only  subject  within  my  contemplation,  while  speaking  of  him. 
Of  the  resolutions  and  measures  here,  in  which  he  had  the  ac- 
knowledged lead,  I  used  the  expression  that  "  Mr.  Henry  certainly 
gave  the  first  impulse  to  the  ball  of  revolution."  [Wirt,  p.  41.] 
The  expression  is  indeed  general,  and  in  all  its  extension  would 
comprehend  all  the  sister  States.  But  indulgent  construction 
would  restrain  it,  as  was  really  meant,  to  the  subject  matter  un- 
der contemplation,  which  was  Virginia  alone  ;  according  to  the 
rule  of  the  lawyers,  and  a  fair  canon  of  general  criticism,  that 
every  expression  should  be  construed  secundum  suhjectam  mate- 
riem.  Vv'here  the  first  attack  was  made,  there  must  have  been 
of  course,  the  first  act  of  resistance,  and  that  was  of  Massachu- 
setts. Our  first  overt  act  of  war  was  Mr.  Henry's  embodying  a 
force  of  militia  from  several  counties,  regularly  armed  and  organ- 
ized, marching  them  in  military  array,  and  making  reprisal  on 
the  King's  treasury  at  the  seat  of  government  for  the  public 
powder  taken  away  by  his  Goveriaor.  This  was  on  the  last  days 
of  April,  1775.  Your  formal  battle  of  Lexington  was  ten  or 
twelve  days  before  that,  which  greatly  overshadowed  in  import- 


122  JEFFEESON'S    WOEKS. 

ance,  as  it  preceded  in  time  our  little  affray,  which  merely  amount- 
ed to  a  levying  of  arms  against  the  King,  and  very  possibly  you 
had  had  military  affrays  before  the  regular  battle  of  Lexington. 

These  explanations  will,  I  hope,  assure  you.  Sir,  that  so  far  as 
cither  facts  or  opinions  have  been  truly  quoted  from  me^  they 
have  never  been  meant  to  intercept  the  just  fame  of  Massachu- 
setts, for  the  promptitude  and  perseverance  of  her  early  resist- 
ance. We  willingly  cede  to  her  the  laud  of  having  been  (al- 
though not  exclusively)  "  the  cradle  of  sound  principles,"  and 
if  some  of  us  believe  she  has  deflected  from  them  in  her  course, 
we  retain  full  confidence  in  her  ultimate  return  to  them. 

I  will  now  proceed  to  your  quotation  from  Mr.  Galloway's 
statements  of  what  passed  in  Congress  on  their  declaration  of 
independence,  in  which  statement  there  is  not  one  word  of  truth, 
and  where,  bearing  some  resemblance  to  truth,  it  is  an  entire  per- 
version of  it.  I  do  not  charge  this  on  Mr.  Galloway  himself ; 
his  desertion  having  taken  place  long  before  these  measures,  be 
doubtless  received  his  information  from  some  of  the  loyal  friends 
whom  he  left  behind  him.  But  as  yourself,  as  well  as  others, 
appear  embarrassed  by  inconsistent  accounts  of  the  proceedings 
on  that  memorable  occasion,  and  as  those  who  have  endeavored 
to  restore  the  truth  have  themselves  committed  some  errors,  I 
will  give  you  some  extracts  from  a  written  document  on  that 
subject,  for  the  truth  of  which  I  pledge  myself  to  heaven  and 
earth ;  having,  while  the  question  of  independence  was  under 
consideration  before  Congress,  taken  written  notes,  in  my  seat, 
of  what  was  passing,  and  reduced  them  to  form  on  the  final  con- 
clusion. I  have  now  before  me  that  paper,  from  which  the  fol- 
lowing are  extracts : 

"■'  On  Friday  the  7th  of  June,  1776,  the  delegates  from  Vir- 
ginia moved,  in  obedience  to  instructions  from  their  constituents, 
that  the  Congress  should  declare  that  these  united  colonies  are, 
and  of  right  ought  to  be,  free  and  independent  States  ;  that  they  are 
absolved  from  all  allegiance  to  the  British  crown,  and  that  all  po- 
litical connection  between  them  and  the  State  of  Great  Britain 
IS,  and  ought  to  he  totally  dissolved  ;  that  measures  should  be 


CORRESPONDENCE.  123 

immediately  taken  for  procuring  the  assistance  of  foreign  powers, 
and  a  confederation  be  formed  to  bind  the  colonies  more  closely 
together.  The  house  being  obliged  to  attend  at  that  time  to 
some  other  business,  the  proposition  was  referred  to  the  next  day, 
when  the  members  were  ordered  to  attend  punctually  at  ten 
o'clock.  Saturday,  June  8th,  they  proceeded  to  take  it  into  con- 
sideration, and  referred  it  to  a  committee  of  the  whole,  into 
which  they  immediately  resolved  themselves,  and  passed  that 
day  and  Monday  the  10th  in  debating  on  the  subject. 

"  It  appearing  in  the  course  of  these  debates,  that  the  colonies 
of  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Delaware,  Maryland, 
and  South  Carolina  were  not  yet  matured  for  falling  from  the 
parent  stem,  but  that  they  were  fast  advancing  to  that  state,  it 
was  thought  most  prudent  to  wait  awhile  for  them,  and  to  post- 
pone the  final  decision  to  July  1st.  But  that  this  might  occasion 
as  little  delay  as  possible,  a  committee  was  appointed  to  prepare 
a  Declaration  of  Independence.  The  committee  were  J.  Adams, 
Dr.  Franklin,  Roger  Sherman,  Robert  R.  Livingston  and  mj^self. 
This  was  reported  to  the  House  on  Friday  the  28th  of  June, 
when  it  was  read  and  ordered  to  lie  on  the  table.  On  Monday 
the  1st  of  July  the  House  resolved  itself  into  a  committee  of  the 
whole,  and  resumed  the  consideration  of  the  original  motion 
made  by  the  delegates  of  Virginia,  which  being  again  debated 
through  the  day,  was  carried  in  the  affirmative  by  the  votes  of 
New  Hampshire,  Connecticut,  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  New 
Jersey,  Maryland,  Virginia,  North  Carolina  and  Georgia.  South 
Carolina  and  Pensylvania  voted  against  it.  Delaware  having  but 
two  members  present,  they  were  divided.  The  delegates  for 
New  York  declared  they  were  for  it  themselves,  and  were  as- 
sured their  constituents  were  for  it ;  but  that  their  instructions 
having  been  drawn  near  a  twelvemonth  before,  when  reconcilia- 
tion was  still  the  general  object,  they  were  enjoined  by  them  to 
do  nothing  which  should  impede  that  object.  They  therefore 
thought  themselves  not  justifiable  in  voting  on  either  side,  and 
asked  leave  to  withdraw  from  the  question,  which  was  given 
them.     The  Committee  rose  and  reported  their  resolution  to  the 


124  JEFFEESOK'S    WORKS. 

House.  Mr.  Rutledge  of  South  Carolina,  then  requested  the 
determination  might  be  put  off  to  the  next  day,  as  he  beheved 
his  colleagues,  though  they  disapproved  of  the  resolution,  would 
then  join  in  it  for  the  sake  of  unanimity.  The  ultimate  ques- 
tion whether  the  House  would  agree  to  the  resolution  of  the 
committee  was  accordingly  postponed  to  the  next  day,  when  it 
was  again  moved,  and  South  Carolina  concurred  in  voting  for  it ; 
in  the  meantime  a  third  member  had  come  post  from  the  Dela- 
ware counties,  and  turned  the  vote  of  that  colony  in  favor  of  the 
resolution.  Members  of  a  different  sentiment  attending  that 
morning  from  Pennsylvania  also,  their  vote  was  changed  ;  so 
that  the  whole  twelve  colonies,  who  were  authorized  to  vote  at 
all,  gave  their  votes  for  it ;  and  within  a  few  days,  [July  9th,] 
the  convention  of  New  York  approved  of  it,  and  thus  supplied 
the  void  occasioned  by  the  withdrawing  of  their  delegates  from 
the  vote."  [Be  careful  to  observe  that  this  vacillation  and  vote 
was  on  the  original  motion  of  the  7th  of  June  by  the  Virginia 
delegates,  that  Congress  should  declare  the  colonies  independent.] 

"  Congress  proceeded  the  same  day  to  consider  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  which  has  been  reported  and  laid  on  the  table 
the  Friday  preceding,  and  on  Monday  referred  to  a  committee 
of  the  whole.  The  pusillanimous  idea  that  we  had  friends  in 
England  worth  keeping  terms  with,  still  haunted  the  minds  of 
many.  For  this  reason  those  passages  which  conveyed  censures 
on  the  people  of  England  were  struck  out,  lest  they  give  them 
offence.  The  debates  having  taken  up  the  greater  parts  of  the 
2d,  3d  and  4th  days  of  July,  were,  in  the  evening  of  the  last, 
closed.  The  declaration  was  reported  by  the  committee,  agreed 
to  by  the  House,  and  signed  by  every  member  present  except 
Mr.  Dickinson."     So  far  my  notes. 

Governor  McKean,  in  his  letter  to  McCorkle  of  July  16th,  1817, 
has  thrown  some  lights  on  the  transactions  of  that  day,  but  trust- 
ing to  his  memory  chiefly  at  an  age  when  our  memories  are  not 
to  be  trusted,  he  has  confounded  two  questions,  and  ascribed  pro- 
ceedings to  one  which  belonged  to  the  other.  These  two  ques- 
tions were,  1.  The  Tirginia  motion  of  June  7th  to  declare  ind.e- 


OOERESPO^'DEN'OE.  125 

pendence,  and  2.  The  actual  declaration,  its  matter  and  form. 
Thus  he  states  the  question  on  the  declaration  itself  as  decided 
on  the  1st  of  July.  Bat  it  was  the  Virginia  motion  which  was 
voted  on  that  day  in  committee  of  the  whole  ;  South  Carolina, 
as  well  as  Pennsylvania,  then  voting  against  it.  Bat  the  ulti- 
mate decision  in  the  House  on  the  report  of  the  committee  being 
by  request  postponed  to  the  next  morning,  all  the  States  voted 
for  it,  except  New  York,  whose  vote  was  delayed  for  the  reason 
before  stated.  It  was  not  till  the  2d  of  July  that  the  declaration 
itself  was  taken  up,  nor  till  the  4th  that  it  was  decided  ;  and  it 
was  signed  by  every  member  present,  except  Mr.  Dickinson. 

The  subsequent  signatures  of  members  who  were  not  then 
present,  and  some  of  them  not  yet  in  office,  is  easily  explained, 
if  we  observe  who  they  were  ;  to  wit,  that  they  were  of  New 
York  and  Pennsylvania.  New  York  did  not  sign  till  the  15th, 
because  it  was  not  till  the  9th,  (five  days  after  the  general  signa- 
ture,) that  their  convention  authorized  them  to  do  so.  The  con- 
vention of  Pennsylvania,  learning  that  it  had  been  signed  by  a 
minority  only  of  their  delegates,  named  a  new  delegation  on 
the  20th,  leaving  out  Mr.  Dickinson,  who  had  refused  to  sign. 
Willing  and  Humphreys  who  had  withdrawn,  reappointing  the 
three  members  who  had  signed,  Morris  who  had  not  been  pres- 
ent, and  five  new  ones,  to  wit.  Rush,  Clymer,  Smith,  Taylor 
and  Ross ;  and  Morris  and  the  five  new  members  were  permitted 
to  sign,  becaase  it  manifested  the  assent  of  their  full  delegation, 
and  the  express  will  of  their  convention,  which  might  have  been 
doubted  on  the  former  signature  of  a  minority  only.  Why  the 
signatm-e  of  Thornton  of  New  Hampshire  was  permitted  so  late 
as  the  4th  of  November,  I  cannot  now  say  ;  but  undoubtedly  for 
some  particular  reason  which  we  should  find  to  have  been  good, 
had  it  been  expressed.  These  were  the  only  post-signers,  and 
you  see,  Sir,  that  there  were  solid  reasons  for  receiving  those  of 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  and  that  this  circumstance  in  no 
wise  affects  the  faith  of  this  declaratory  charter  of  om-  rights 
and  of  the  rights  of  man. 

With  a  view  to  correct  errors  of  fact  before  they  become  in- 


126  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

veterate  by  repetition,  I  have  stated  what  I  find  essentially  ma- 
terial in  my  papers ;  but  with  that  brevity  which  the  labor  of 
writing  constrains  me  to  use. 

On  the  fourth  particular  articles  of  inquiry  in  your  letter,  re- 
specting your  grandfather,  the  venerable  Samuel  Adams,  neither 
memory  nor  memorandums  enable  me  to  give  any  information. 
I  can  say  that  he  was  truly  a  great  man,  wise  in  council,  fertile 
in  resources,  immovable  in  his  purposes,  and  had,  I  think,  a 
greater  share  than  any  other  member,  in  advising  and  directing 
our  measures,  m  the  northern  war  especially.  As  a  speaker  he 
could  not  be  compared  with  his  living  colleague  and  namesake, 
whose  deep  conceptions,  nervous  style,  and  undaunted  firmness, 
made  him  truly  our  bulwark  in  debate.  But  Mr.  Samuel  Adams, 
although  not  of  fluent  elocution,  was  so  rigorously  logical,  so 
clear  in  his  views,  abundant  in  good  sense,  and  master  always  of 
his  subject,  that  he  commanded  the  most  profound  attention 
whenever  he  rose  in  an  assembly  by  which  the  froth  of  decla- 
mation was  heard  with  the  most  sovereign  contempt.  I  sincerely 
rejoice  that  the  record  of  his  worth  is  to  be  undertaken  by  one 
so  much  disposed  as  you  will  be  .to  hand  him  down  fairly  to  that 
posterity  for  whose  liberty  and  happiness  he  was.  so  zealous  a 
laborer. 

With  sentiments  of  sincere  veneration  for  his  memory,  accept 
yourself  this  tribute  to  it  with  the  assurances  of  my  great  re- 
spect. 

P.  S.  August  6th,  1822,  since  the  date  of  this  letter,  to  wit, 
this  day,  August  6th,  '22,  I  received  the  new  publication  of  the 
secret  Journals  of  Congress,  wherein  is  stated  a  resolution,  July 
19th,  1776,  that  the  declaration  passed  on  the  4th  be  fairly  en- 
grossed on  parchment,  and  when  engrossed,  be  signed  by  every 
member ;  and  another  of  August  2d,  that  being  engrossed  and 
compared  at  the  table,  was  signed  by  the  members.  That  is  to 
say  the  copy  engrossed  on  parchment  (for  durability)  was  signed 
by  the  members  after  being  compared  at  the  table  with  the  origi- 
nal one,  signed  on  paper  as  before  stated.     I  add  this  P.  S.  to  the 


CORRESPONDENCE.  127 

copy  of  my  letter  to  Mr.  Wells,  to  prevent  confounding  the  signa- 
ture cl'  the  original  with  that  of  the  copy  engrossed  on  parch- 
ment. 


TO    EZRA    STYLES,    ESQ 

JIoNTirELT,o,  June  25,  1819. 

Your  favor,  Sir,  of  the  14th,  has  been  duly  received,  and  with 
it  the  book  you  were  so  kind  as  to  forward  to  me.  For  this 
mark  of  attention,  be  pleased  to  accept  my  thanks.  The  science 
of  the  human  mind  is  curious,  but  is  one  on  which  I  have  not 
indulged  myself  in  much  speculation.  The  times  in  which  I 
have  lived,  and  the  scenes  in  which  I  have  been  engaged,  have 
required  me  to  keep  the  mind  too  much  in  action  to  have  leisure 
to  study  minutely  its  laws  of  action.  I  am  therefore  little  quali- 
fied to  give  an  opinion  orj  the  comparative  worth  of  books  on 
that  subject,  and  little  disposed  to  do  it  on  any  book.  Yours  has 
brought  the  science  within  a  small  compass,  and  that  is  the  merit 
of  the  first  order  ;  and  especially  with  one  to  whom  the  drudgery 
of  letter  writing  often  denies  the  leisure  of  reading  a  single  page 
in  a  week.  On  looking  over  the  summary  of  the  contents  of 
your  book,  it  does  not  seem  likely  to  bring  into  collision  any  of 
those  sectarian  differences  which  you  suppose  may  exist  between 
us.  In  that  branch  of  religion  which  regards  the  moralities  of 
life,  and  the  duties  of  a  social  being,  which  teaches  us  to  love 
our  neighbors  as  ourselves,  and  to  do  good  to  all  men,  I  am  sure 
that  you  and  I  do  not  differ.  We  probably  differ  on  the  dogmas 
of  theology,  the  foundation  of  all  sectarianism,  and  on  which  no 
two  sects  dream  alike  ;  for  if  they  did  they  would  then  be 
of  the  same.  You  say  you  are  a  Calvinist.  I  am  not.  T 
am  of  a  sect  by  myself,  as  far  as  I  know.  I  am  not  a  Jew,  and 
therefore  do  not  adopt  their  theology,  which  supposes  the  God  of 
infinite  justice  to  punish  the  sins  of  the  fathers  upon  their  chil- 
dren, unto  the  third  and  fourth  generation  ;  and  the  benevolent 
and  sublime  reformer  of  that  religion  has  told  us  only  that  God 
is  good  and  perfect,  but  has  not  defined  him.     I  am,  therefore, 


128  JErrERSON'S    WOEKS. 

of  his  theology,  believing'  that  we  have  neither  words  nor  ideas 
adequate  to  that  definition.  And  if  we  could  all,  after  this  ex- 
ample, leave  the  subject  as  undefinable,  we  should  all  be  of  one 
sect,  doers  of  good,  and  eschewers  of  evil.  No  doctrines  of  his 
lead  to  schism.  It  is  the  speculations  of  crazy  theologists  which 
have  made  a  Babel  of  a  religion  the  most  moral  and  sublime  ever 
preached  to  man,  and  calculated  to  heal,  and  not  to  create  differ- 
ences. These  religious  animosities  I  impute  to  those  who  call 
themselves  his  ministers,  and  who  engraft  their  casuistries  on  the 
stock  of  his  simple  precepts.  I  am  sometimes  more  angry  wi(h 
them  than  is  authorized  by  the  blessed  charities  which  he 
preaches.    To  j^ourself  I  pray  the  acceptance  of  my  great  respect. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MONTICELLO,  July  fl,   1819. 

Deak  Sie, — I  am  in  debt  to  you  for  your  letters  of  May  the 
21st,  27th,  and  June  the  22d.  The  first,  delivered  me  by  Mr. 
Greenwood,  gave  me  the  gratification  of  his  acquaintance  ;  and  a 
gratification  it  always  is,  to  be  made  acquainted  with  gentlemen 
of  candor,  worth,  and  information,  as  I  found  Mr.  Greenwood  lo 
be.  That,  on  the  subject  of  Mr.  Samuel  Adams  Wells,  shall  not 
be  forgotten  in  time  and  place,  when  it  can  be  used  to  his  ad- 
vantage. 

But  what  has  attracted  my  peculiar  notice,  is  the  paper  from 
Mecklenburg  county,  of  North  Carolina,  published  in  the  Essex 
Register,  which  you  were  so  kind  as  to  enclose  in  your  last,  of 
June  the  22d.  And  you  seem  to  think  it  genuine.  I  believe  it 
spurious.  I  deem  it  to  be  a  very  unjustifiable  quiz,  like  that  of 
the  volcano,  so  minutely  related  to  us  as  having  broken  out  in 
North  Carolina,  some  half  a  dozen  years  ago,  in  that  part  of  the 
country,  and  perhaps  in  that  very  county  of  Mecklenburg,  for  I 
do  not  remember  its  precise  locality.  If  this  paper  be  really  taken 
from  the  Raleigh  Register,  as  quoted,  I  wonder  it  should  have 
escaped  Ritchie,  who  culls  what  is  good  from  every  paper,  as 
the  bee  from  every  flower ;  and  the  National  Intelligencer,  too, 


CORRESPONDENCE.  5*29 

which  is  edited  by  a  North  Carolinian  ;  and  that  the  fire  should 
blaze  out  all  at  once  in  Essex,  one  thousand  miles  from  where 
the  spark  is  said  to  have  fallen.  But  if  really  taken  from  the 
Raleigh  Register,  who  is  the  narrator,  and  is  the  name  subscijbed 
real,  or  is  it  as  fictitious  as  the  paper  itself  ?  It  appeals,  too,  to 
an  original  book,  which  is  burnt,  to  Mr.  Alexander,  who  is  dead, 
to  a  joint  letter  from  Caswell,  Hughes,  and-  Hooper,  all  dead,  to 
a  copy  sent  to  the  dead  Caswell,  and  another  sent  to  Doctor 
Williamson,  now  probably  dead,  whose  memory  did  not  recollect, 
in  the  history  he  has  written  of  North  Carolina,  this  gigantic 
step  of  its  county  of  Mecklenberg.  Horry,  too,  is  silent  in  his 
history  of  Marion,  whose  scene  of  action  was  the  country  border- 
ing on  Mecklenburg.  Ramsay,  Marshall,  Jones,  Girardin,  Wirt, 
historians  of  the  adjacent  States,  all  silent.  When  Mr.  Henry's 
resolutions,  far  short  of  independence,  flew  like  lightning  through 
every  paper,  and  kindled  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  this  flaming 
declaration  of  the  same  date,  of  the  independence  of  Mecklen- 
burg county,  of  North  Carolina,  absolving  it  from  the  British  al- 
legiance, and  abjuring  all  political  connection  with  that  nation, 
although  sent  to  Congress  too,  is  never  heard  of.  It  is  not  known 
even  a  twelvemonth  after,  when  a  similar  proposition  is  first 
made  in  that  body.  Armed  with  this  bold  example,  would  not 
you  have  addressed  our  timid  brethren  in  peals  of  thunder  on 
their  tardy  fears  ?  Would  not  every  advocate  of  independence 
have  rung  the  glories  of  Mecklenberg  county  in  North  Carolina, 
in  the  ears  of  the  doubting  Dickinson  and  others,  who  hung  so 
heavily  on  us  ?  Yet  the  example  of  independent  Mecklenberg 
county,  in  North  Carolina,  was  never  once  quoted.  The  paper 
speaks,  too,  of  the  continued  exertions  of  their  delegation  (Cas- 
well, Hooper,  Hughes)  "  in  the  cause  of  liberty  and  indepen- 
dence." Now  you  remember  as  well  as  I  do,  that  we  had  not  a 
greater  tory  in  Congress  than  Hooper ;  that  Hughes  was  very 
wavering,  sometimes  firm,  sometimes  feeble,  according  as  the  day 
was  clear  or  cloudy ;  that  Caswell,  indeed,  was  a  good  whig,  and 
kept  these  gentlemen  to  the  notch,  while  he  was  present ;  but 
that  he  left  us  soon,  and  their  line  of  conduct  became  then  un- 

VOL.  VII.  9 


130  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

certain  until  Penn  came,  who  fixed  Hughes  and  the  vote  of  the 
State.  I  must  not  be  understood  as  suggesting  any  doubtfulness 
m  the  State  of  North  Carolina.  No  State  was  more  fixed  or  for- 
ward. Nor  do  I  affirm,  positively,  that  this  paper  is  a  fabrica- 
tion ;  because  the  proof  of  a  negative  can  only  be  presumptive. 
But  I  shall  believe  it  such  until  positive  and  solemn  proof  of  its 
authenticity  be  produced.  And  if  the  name  of  McKnitt  be  real, 
and  not  a  part  of  the  fabrication,  it  needs  a  vindication  by  the 
production  of  such  proof.  For  the  present,  I  must  be  an  unbe- 
liever in  the  apocryphal  gospel. 

I  am  glad  to  learn  that  Mr.  Ticknor  has  safely  returned  to  his 
friends ;  but  should  have  been  much  more  pleased  had  he  accept- 
ed the  Professorship  in  our  University,  which  we  should  have 
offered  him  in  form.  Mr.  Bowditch,  too,  refuses  us ;  so  fascinat- 
ing is  the  vinculum  of  the  dulce  natale  solutn.  Our  wish  is  to 
procure  natives,  where  they  can  be  found,  like  these  gentlemen, 
of  the  first  order  of  requirement  in  their  respective  lines  ;  but 
preferring  foreigners  of  the  first  order  to  natives  of  the  second, 
we  shall  certainly  have  to  go  for  several  of  our  Professors,  to 
countries  more  advanced  in  science  than  we  are. 

I  set  out  within  three  or  four  days  for  my  other  home,  the  dis- 
tance of  which,  and  its  cross  mails,  are  great  impediments  to  epis- 
tolary communications.  I  shall  remain  there  about  two  months ; 
and  there,  here,  and  everywhere,  I  am  and  shall  always  be,  affec- 
tionately and  respectfully  yours. 


TO    JOHN    BRAZIER,  THE    AUTHOR    OF    THE    REVIEW  OF    PICKERING    ON 
GREEK    PRONUNCIATION. 

Poplar  FoiiKt,T,  August  '24,  1819. 

Sir, — The  acknowledgment  of  your  favor  of  July  15th,  and 
thanks  for  the  Review  which  it  covered  of  Mr.  Pickering's 
Memoir  on  the  Modem  Greek,  have  been  delayed  by  a  visit  to 
an  occasional  hut  distant  residence  from  Monticello,  and  to  an 
attack  here  of  rheumatism  which  is  just  now  moderating.     I  had 


CORRESPONDENCE.  131 

been  much  pleased  with  the  memoir,  and  was  much  also  with 
your  review  of  it.  I  have  little  hope  indeed  of  the  recovery  of 
the  ancient  pronunciation  of  that  finest  of  human  languages,  but 
still  I  rejoice  at  the  attention  the  subject  seems  to  excite  with 
you,  because  it  is  an  evidence  that  our  country  hegins  to  have 
a  taste  for  something  more  than  merely  as  much  Greek  as  will 
pass  a  candidate  for  clerical  ordination. 

You  ask  my  opinion  on  the  extent  to  which  classical  learning 
should  be  carried  in  our  country.  A  sickly  condition  permits  me 
to  think,  and  a  rheumatic  hand  to  write  too  briefly  on  this  litigat- 
ed qnestiou.  The  utilities  we  derive  from  the  remains  of  the 
Greek  and  Latin  languages  are,  first,  as  models  of  pure  taste  in 
writing.  To  these  we  are  certainly  indebted  for  the  national 
and  chaste  style  of  modern  composition  which  so  much  dis- 
tinguishes the  nations  to  whom  these  languages  are  familiar. 
Without  these  models  we  should  probably  have  continued  the 
inflated  style  of  our  northern  ancestors,  or  the  hyperbolical  and 
vague  one  of  the  east.  Second.  Among  the  values  of  classical 
learning,  I  estimate  the  luxury  of  reading  the  Greek  and  Roman 
authors  in  all  the  beauties  of  their  originals.  And  why  should 
not  this  innocent  and  elegant  luxury  take,  its  preeminent  stand 
ahead  of  all  those  addressed  merely  to  the  senses  ?  I  think  my- 
self more  indebted  to  my  father  for  this  than  for  all  the  other  lux- 
uries his  cares  and  affections  have  placed  within  my  reach  ;  and 
more  now  than  when  younger,  and  more  susceptible  of  delights 
from  other  sources.  When  the  decays  of  age  have  enfeebled  the 
useful  energies  of  the  mind,  the  classic  pages  fill  up  the  vacuum 
of  ennui,  and  become  sweet  composers  to  that  rest  of  the  grave 
into  which  we  are  all  sooner  or  later  to  descend.  Third.  A  third 
value  is  in  the  stores  of  real  science  deposited  and  transmitted  us 
in  these  languages,  to-wit :  in  history,  ethics,- arithmetic,  geom- 
etry, astronomy,  natural  history,  &c. 

But  to  whom  are  these  things  useful  ?  Certainly  not  to  all 
men.  There  are  conditions  of  life  to  which  they  must  be  for- 
ever estranged,  and  there  are  epochs  of  life  too,  after  which  the 
endeavor  to  attain  them  would  be  a  great  misemplovment  of 


132  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

time.  Their  acquisition  should  be  the  occupation  of  our  early 
years  only,  when  the  memory  is  susceptible  of  deep  and  ^.asting 
impressions,  and  reason  and  judgment  not  yet  strong  enough  for 
abstract  speculations.  To  the  moralist  they  are  valuable,  be- 
cause they  furnish  ethical  writings  highly  and  justly  esteemed  ; 
although  in  my  own  opinion,  the  moderns  are  far  advanced  be- 
yond them  in  this  line  of  science,  the  divine  finds  in  the  Greek 
language  a  translation  of  his  primary  code,  of  more  importance 
to  him  than  the  original  because  better  understood  ;  and,  in  the 
same  language,  the  newer  code,  with  the  doctrines  of  the  earliest 
fathers,  who  lived  and  wrote  before  the  simple  precepts  of  the 
founder  of  this  most  benign  and  pure  of  all  systems  of  morality 
became  frittered  into  subtleties  and  mysteries,  and  hidden  under 
jargons  incomprehensible  to  the  human  mind.  To  these  original 
sources  he  must  now,  therefore,  return,  to  recover  the  virgin  pu- 
rity of  his  religion.  The  lawyer  finds  in  the  Latin  language  the 
system  of  civil  law  most  conformable  with  the  principles  of  justice 
of  any  which  has  ever  yet  been  established  among  men,  and 
from  which  much  has  been  incorporated  into  our  own.  The 
physician  as  good  a  code  of  his  art  as  has  been  given  us  to  this 
day.  Theories  and  systems  of  medicine,  indeed,  have  been  in 
perpetual  change  from  the  days  of  the  good  Hippocrates  to  the 
days  of  the  good  Rush,  but  which  of  them  is  the  true  one  ?  the 
present,  to  be  sure,  as  long  as  it  is  the  present,  but  to  yield  its 
place  in  turn  to  the  next  novelty,  which  is  then  to  become  the 
true  system,  and  is  to  mark  the  vast  advance  of  medicine  since 
the  days  of  Hippocrates.  Our  situation  is  certainly  iDenefited 
by  the  discovery  of  some  new  and  very  valuable  medicines ;  and 
substituting  those  for  some  of  his  with  the  treasure  of  facts,  and 
of  sound  observations  recorded  by  him  (mixed  to  be  sure  with 
anilities  of  his  day)  and  we  shall  have  nearly  the  present  sunv 
of  the  healing  art.  The  statesman  will  find  in  these  language* 
history,  politics,  mathematics,  ethics,  eloquence,  love  of  country, 
to  which  he  must  add  the  sciences  of  his  own  day,  for  which  of 
them  should  be  unknown  to  him  ?  And  all  the  sciences  must 
recur  to  the  classical  languages  for  the  etymon,  and  sound  under- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  I33 

standing  of  their  fundamental  terms.  For  the  merchant  I  should 
not  say  that  the  languages  are  a  necessary.  Ethics,  mathemat- 
ics, geography,  political  economy,  history,  seem  to  constitute  the 
immediate  foundations  of  his  calling.  The  agriculturist  needs 
ethics,  mathematics,  chemistry  and  natural  philosophy.  The 
mechanic  the  same.  To  them  the  languages  are  but  ornament 
and  comfort.  I  know  it  is  often  said  there  have  been  shining 
examples  of  men  of  great  abilities  in  all  the  businesses  of  life, 
•without  any  other  science  than  what  they  had  gathered  from  con- 
versations and  intercourse  with  the  world.  But  who  can  say 
what  these  men  would  not  have  been  had  they  started  in  the 
science  on  the  shoulders  of  a  Demosthenes  or  Cicero,  of  a  Locke 
or  Bacon,  or  a  Newton  ?  To  sum  the  whole,  therefore,  it  may 
truly  be  said  that  the  classical  languages  are  a  solid  basis  for 
most,  and  an  ornament  to  all  the  sciences. 

I  am  warned  by  my  aching  fingers  to  close  this  hasty  sketch, 
and  to  place  here  my  last  and  fondest  wishes  for  the  advance- 
ment of  our  country  in  the  useful  sciences  and  arts,  and  my 
assurances  of  respect  and  esteem  for  the  Reviewer  of  the  Memoir 
on  modern  Greek. 


TO    JUDGE    ROANE. 

Poplar  Forkst,  September  6,  1819. 

Dear  Sir, — I  had  read  in  the  Enquirer,  and  with  great  appro- 
bation, the  pieces  signed  Hampden,  and  have  read  them  again 
with  redoubled  approbation,  in  the  copies  you  have  been  so  kind 
as  to  send  me.  I  subscribe  to  every  title  of  them.  They  con- 
tain the  true  principles  of  the  revolution  of  1800,  for  that  was  as 
real  a  revolution  in  the  principles  of  our  government  as  that  of 
1776  was  in  its  form  ;  not  efi"ected  indeed  b};-  the  sword,  as  that, 
but  by  the  rational  and  peaceable  instrument  of  reform,  the  suf- 
frage of  the  people.  The  nation  declared  its  will  by  dismissing 
fmictionaries  of  one  principle,  and  electing  those  of  another,  lu 
the  two  branches,  executive  and  legislative,  submitted  to  their 


134;  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

election.  Over  the  judiciary  department,  the  constitution  had 
deprived  them  of  their  control.  That,  therefore,  has  continued 
the  reprobated  system,  and  although  new  matter  has  been  occa- 
sionally incorporated  into  the  old,  yet  the  leaven  of  the  old  mass 
seems  to  assimilate  to  itself  the  new,  and  after  twenty  years'  con- 
firmation of  the  federated  system  by  the  voice  of  the  nation,  de- 
clared through  the  medium  of  elections,  we  find  the  judiciary  en 
every  occasion,  still  driving  us  into  consolidation. 

In  denying  the  right  they  usurp  of  exclusively  explaining  the 
constitution,  I  go  further  than  you  do,  if  I  understand  rightly 
your  quotation  from  the  Federalist,  of  an  opinion  that  "  the  ju- 
diciary is  the  last  resort  in  relation  to  the  other  departtnents  of 
the  governnient,  but  not  in  relation  to  the  rights  of  the  parties  tc 
the  compact  under  which  the  judiciary  is  derived."  If  this 
opinion  be  sound,  then  indeed  is  our  constitution  a  complete  felo 
de  se.  For  intending  to  establish  three  departments,  co-ordinate 
and  independent,  that  they  might  check  and  balance  one  another, 
it  has  given,  according  to  this  opinion,  to  one  of  them  alone,  the 
right  to  prescribe  rules  for  the  government  of  the  others,  and  to 
that  one  too,  which  is  unelected  by,  and  independent  of  the  na- 
tion. For  experience  has  already  shown  that  the  impeachment 
it  has  provided  is  not  even  a  scare -crow  ;  that  such  opinions  as 
the  one  you  combat,  sent  cautiously  out,  as  you  observe  also,  by 
detachment,  not  belonging  to  the  case  often,  but  sought  for  out 
of  it,  as  if  to  rally  the  public  opinion  beforehand  to  their  views, 
and  to  indicate  the  line  they  are  to  walk  in,  have  been  so  quietly 
passed  over  as  never  to  have  excited  animadversion,  even  in  a 
speech  of  any  one  of  the  body  entrusted  with  impeachment. 
The  constitution,  on  this  hypothesis,  is  a  mere  thing  of  wax  in 
the  hands  of  the  judiciary,  which  they  may  twist  and  shape  into 
any  form  they  please.  It  should  be  remembered,  as  an  axiom  of 
eternal  truth  in  politics,  that  whatever  power  in  any  government 
is  independent,  is  absolute  also  ;  in  theory  only,  at  first,  while  the 
spirit  of  the  people  is  up,  but  in  practice,  as  fast  as  that  relaxes. 
Independence  can  be  trusted  nowhere  but  with  the  people  in 
ma'is.     They  are  inherently  independent  of  all  but  moral  law. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  135 

My  construction  of  the  constitution  is  very  different  from  that 
you  quote.  It  is  that  each  department  is  truly  independent  of 
the  others,  and  has  an  equal  right  to  decide  for  itself  what  is  the 
meaning  of  the  constitution  in  the  cases  submitted  to  its  action  ; 
and  especially,  where  it  is  to  act  ultimately  and  without  appeal. 
I  will  explain  myself  by  examples,  which,  having  occurred  while 
I  was  in  office,  are  better  known  to  me,  and  the  principles  which 
governed  them. 

A  legislatm'e  had  passed  the  sedition  law.  The  lederal  courts 
had  subjected  certain  individuals  to  its  penalties  of  fine  and  im- 
prisonment. On  coming  into  office,  I  released  these  individuals 
by  the  power  of  pardon  committed  to  executive  discretion,  which 
could  never  be  more  properly  exercised  than  where  citizens  were 
suffering  without  the  authority  of  law,  or,  which  was  equivalent, 
under  a  law  unauthorized  by  the  constitution,  and  therefore  null. 
In  the  case  of  Marbury  and  Madison,  the  federal  judges  declared 
that  commissions,  signed  and  sealed  by  the  President,  were  valid, 
although  not  delivered.  I  deemed  delivery  essential  to  complete 
a  deed,  which,  as  long  as  it  remains  in  the  hands  of  the  party,  is 
as  yet  no  need,  it  is  in  posse  only,  but  not  in  esse,  and  I  with- 
held delivery  of  the  commissions.  They  cannot  issue  a  man- 
damus to  the  President  or  legislature,  or  to  any  of  their  officers.* 

When  the  British  treaty  of  arrived,  without  any  provision 

against  the  impressment  of  our  seamen,  I  determined  not  to  rati- 
fy it.  The  Senate  thought  I  should  ask  their  advice.  I  thought 
that  would  be  a  mockery  of  them,  when  I  was  predetermined 
against  following  it,  should  they  advise  its  ratification.  The 
constitution  had  made  their  advice  necessary  to  confirm  a  treaty, 
but  not  to  reject  it.  This  has  been  blamed  by  some  ;  but  I  have 
never  doubted  its  soundness.  In  the  cases  of  two  persons,  an- 
tenati,  under  exactly  similar  circumstances,  the  federal  court  had 
determined  that  one  of  them  (Duane)  was  not  a  citizen  ;  the 
House  of  Representatives  nevertheless  determined  that  the  other 
(Smith,  of  South  CaroHna)  was  a  citizen,  and  admitted  him  to 
his  seat  in  their  body.     Duane  was  a  republican,  and   Smith  a 

*  The  constitution  controlling  the  common  law  in  this  particilar. 


136  JEFFERSON'S    WOKKS. 

federalist,  and  these  decisions  were  made  during  the  federal  as- 
cendancy. 

These  are  examples  of  my  position,  that  each  of  the  three  de^ 
partments  has  equally  the  right  to  decide  for  itself  what  is  its 
duty  under  the  constitution,  without  any  regard  to  what  the 
others  may  have  decided  for  themselves  under  a  similar  question. 
But  you  intimate  a  wish  that  my  opinion  should  he  known  on 
this  subject.  No,  dear  Sir,  I  withdraw  from  all  contests  of 
opinion,  and  resign  everything  cheerfully  to  the  generation  now 
in  place.  They  are  wiser  than  we  were,  and  their  successors 
will  be  wiser  than  they,  from  the  progressive  advance  of  science. 
Tranquillity  is  the  summum  bonum  of  age.  I  wish,  therefore,  to 
offend  no  man's  opinion,  nor  to  draw  disquieting  animadversions 
on  my  own.  While  duty  required  it,  I  met  opposition  with  a 
firm  and  fearless  step.  But  loving  mankind  in  my  individual 
relations  with  them,  I  pray  to  be  permitted  to  depart  in  their 
peace  ;  and  like  the  superannuated  soldier,  "  quadragenis  sti- 
pendiis  emeritis,"  to  hang  my  arms  on  the  post.  I  have  unwisely, 
I  fear,  embarked  in  an  enterprise  of  great  public  concern,  but 
not  to  be  accomplished  within  my  term,  without  their  liberal  and 
prompt  support.  A  severe  illness  the  last  year,  and  another  from 
which  I  am  just  emerged,  admonish  me  that  repetitions  may  be 
expected,  against  which  a  declining  frame  cannot  long  bear  up. 
I  am  anxious,  therefore,  to  get  our  University  so  far  advanced  as 
may  encourage  the  public  to  persevere  to  its  final  accomplish- 
ment. That  secured,  I  shall  sing  my  nmic  demittas.  I  hope 
your  labors  will  be  long  continued  in  the  spirit  in  which  they 
have  always  been  exercised,  in  maintenance  of  those  principles 
on  which  I  verily  believe  the  future  happiness  of  our  country 
essentially  depends.  I  salute  you  with  affectionate  and  great 
respect. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  I37 


TO    MK.    MOOBE. 

JIoNTicisi.LO,  September  22,  1819. 

1  thank  yon,  Sir,  for  the  remarks  on  the  pronunciation  of  the 
Greek  language  which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me.  I 
have  read  them  with  pleasure,  as  I  had  the  pamphlet  of  Mr. 
Pickering  on  the  same  subject.  This  question  has  occupied  long 
and  learned  inquiry,  and  cannot,  as  I  apprehend,  be  ever  positive- 
ly decided.  Very  early  in  my  classical  days,  I  took  up  the  idea 
that  the  ancient  Greek  language  having  been  changed  by  degrees 
into  the  modern,  and  the  present  race  of  that  people  having  re- 
ceived it  by  tradition,  they  had  of  course  better  pretensions  to 
the  ancient  pronunciation  also,  than  any  foreign  nation  could 
have.  When  at  Paris,  I  became  acquainted  with  some  learned 
Greeks,  from  whom  I  took  pains  to  learn  the  modern  pronunci- 
ation. But  I  could  not  receive  it  as  genuine  in  toto.  I  could 
not  believe  that  the  ancient  Greeks  had  provided  six  different 
notations  for  the  simple  sound  of  <,  iota,  and  left  the  five  other 
sounds  which  we  give  to  n,  v,  i-i,  ot,  ui,  without  any  characters 
of  notation  at  all.  I  could  not  acknowledge  the  i,  upsillon,  as 
an  equivalent  to  our  v,  as  in  A/tUfyg,  which  they  pronounce 
Achillevs,  nor  the  ) ,  gamma,  to  oiu-  y,  as  in  uX. ;,  which  they  pro- 
nounce alye.  I  concluded,  therefore,  that  as  experience  proves 
to  us  that  the  pronunciation  of  all  languages  changes,  in  their 
descent  through  time,  that  of  the  Greek  must  have  done  so  also 
in  some  degree  ;  and  the  more  probably,  as  the  body  of  the  words 
themselves  had  substantially  changed,  and  I  presumed  that  the 
instances  above  mentioned  might  be  classed  with  the  degener- 
acies of  time  ;  a  presumption  strengthened  by  their  remarkable 
cacophony.  As  to  all  the  other  letters,  I  have  supposed  we 
might  yield  to  their  traditionary  claim  of  a  more  orthodox  pro- 
nunciation. Indeed,  they  sound  most  of  them  as  we  do,  and, 
where  they  diifer,  as  in  the  f,  (5,  x,  their  souiids  do  not  revolt  us, 
nor  impair  the  beauty  of  the  language. 

If  we  adhere  to  the  Erasmian  pronunciation,  we  must  go  to 
Italy  for  it,  as  we  must  do  for  the  most  probably  correct  pronun- 


138  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

ciation  of  the  language  of  the  Romans,  because  rejecting  the 
modern,  we  must  argue  that  the  ancient  pronunciation  was  prob- 
ably brought  from  Greece,  with  the  language  itself;  and,  as  Italy- 
was  the  country  to  which  it  was  brought,  and  from  which  it  eman- 
ated to  other  nations,  we  must  presume  it  better  presei-ved  there 
than  with  the  nations  copying  from  them,  who  would  be  apt  to  af- 
fect its  pronunciation  with  some  of  their  own  national  peculiarities. 
And  in  fact,  we  find  that  no  two  nations  pronounce  it  alike, 
although  all  pretend  to  the  Erasmian  pronunciation.  But  the 
■whole  subject  is  conjectural,  and  allows  therefore  full  and  lawful 
scope  to  the  vagaries  of  the  human  mind.  I  am  glad,  however, 
to  see  the  question  stirred  here ;  because  it  may  excite  among 
our  young  countrymen  a  spirit  of  inquiry  and  criticism,  and  lead 
them  to  more  attention  to  this  most  beautiful  of  all  languages. 
And  wishing  that  the  salutary  example  you  have  set  may  have 
this  good  effect,  I  salute  you  with  great  respect  and  consideration- 


TO    MR.     SHORT. 

MoNTioi.,i.LO,  October  31,  1819. 

Dear  Sir, — Your  favor  of  the  21st  is  received.  My  late  ill- 
ness, in  which  you  are  so  kind  as  to  feel  an  interest,  was  produced 
by  a  spasmodic  stricture  of  the  ilium,  which  came  upon  me  on 
the  7th  inst.  The  crisis  was  short,  passed  over  favorably  on  the 
fourth  day,  and  I  should  soon  have  been  well  but  that  a  dose  of 
calomel  and  jalap,  in  which  were  only  eight  or  nine  grains  of 
the  former,  brought  on  a  salivation.  Of  this,  however,  nothing 
now  remains  but  a  little  soreness  of  the  mouth.  I  have  been 
able  to  get  on  horseback  for  three  or  four  days  past. 

As  you  say  of  yourself,  I  too  am  an  Epicurian.  I  consider  the 
genuine  (not  the  imputed)  doctrines  of  Epicurus  as  containing 
everything  rational  in  moral  philosophy  which  Greece  and  Rome 
have  left  us.  Epictetus  indeed,  has  given  us  what  was  good  of 
the  stoics ;  all  beyond,  of  their  dogmas,  being  hypocrisy  and 
grimace.     Their  great  crime  was  'in  their  calumnies  of  Epicurus 


CORRESPONDENCE.  139 

and  misrepresentations  of  his  doctrines  ;  in  which  we  lament  to 
see  the  candid  character  of  Cicero  engaging  as  an  accomplice. 
Diffuse,  vapid,  rhetorical,  hut  enchanting.  His  prototype  Plato, 
eloquent  as  himself,  dealing  out  mysticisms  incomprehensible  to 
the  human  mind,  has  been  deified  by  certain  sects  usiu-ping  the 
name  of  Christians ;  because,  in  his  foggy  conceptions,  they  found 
a  basis  of  impenetrable  darkness  whereon  to  rear  fabrications  as 
delirious,  of  their  own  invention.  These  they  fathered  blasphe- 
mously on  him  whom  they  claimed  as  their  founder,  but  who 
would  disclaim  them  with  the  indignation  which  their  carica- 
tures of  his  religion  so  justly  excite.  Of  Socrates  we  have  no- 
thing genuine  but  in  the  Memorabilia  of  Xenophon;  for  Plato 
makes  him  one  of  his  Collocutors  merely  to  cover  his  own 
whimsies  under  the  mantle  of  his  name  ;  a  libertjr  of  which  we 
are  told  Socrates  himself  complained.  Seneca  is  indeed  a  fine 
moralist,  disfiguring  his  work  at  times  with  some  Stoicisms,  and 
afli'ecting  too  much  of  antithesis  and  point,  yet  giving  us  on  the 
whole  a  great  deal  of  sound  and  practical  morality.  But  the 
greatest  of  all  the  reformers  of  the  depraved  religion  of  his  own 
country,  was  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Abstracting  what  is  really  his 
from  the  rubbish  in  which  it  is  bmied,  easily  distinguished  by 
its  lustre  from  the  dross  of  his  biographers,  and  as  separable  from 
that  as  the  diamond  from  the  dunghill,  we  have  the  outlines  of 
a  system  of  the  most  sublime  morality  which  has  ever  fallen 
from  the  lips  of  man ;  outlines  which  it  is  lamentable  he  did  not 
live  to  fill  up.  Epictetus  and  Epicm-us  give  laws  for  governing 
ourselves,  Jesus  a  supplement  of  the  duties  and  charities  we  owe 
to  others.  The  estabhshment  of  the  innocent  and  genuine  char- 
acter of  this  benevolent  moralist,  and  the  rescuing  it  from  the  im- 
putation of  imposture,  which  has  resulted  from  artificial  systems,* 
invented  by  ultra-Christian  sects,  unauthorized  by  a  single  word 
ever  uttered  by  him,  is  a  most  desirable  object,  and  one  to  which 

"■■  e.  g.  The  immaculate  conception  of  Jesus,  his  deification,  the  creation  of  the 
world  by  him,  his  miraculous  powers,  his  resurrection  and  visible  ascension,  hig 
corporeal  presence  in  the  Eucharist,  the  Trinity,  original  sin,  atonement,  regener- 
ation, election,  orders  of  Hierarchy,  <Sjo. 


140  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Priestley  has  successfully  devoted  his  labors  and  learning.  It 
would  in  time,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  effect  a  quiet  euthanasia  of  the 
heresies  of  bigotry  and  fanaticism  which  have  so  long  triumphed 
over  human  reason,  and  so  generally  and  deeply  afflicted  man- 
kind ;  but  this  work  is  to  be  begun  by  winnowing  the  grain  from 
the  chaff  of  the  historians  of  his  life.  I  have  sometimes  thought 
of  translating  Epictetus  (for  he  has  never  been  tolerable  translat- 
ed into  English)  by  adding  the  genuine  doctrines  of  Epicurus 
from  the  Syntagma  of  Gassendi,  and  an  abstract  from  the  Evan- 
gelists of  whatever  has  the  stamp  of  the  eloquence  and  fine  im- 
agination of  Jesus.  The  last  I  attempted  too  hastily  some  twelve 
or  fifteen  years  ago.  It  was  the  work  of  two  or  three  nights 
only,  at  Washington,  after  getting  through  the  evening  task  of 
reading  the  letters  and  papers  of  the  day.  But  with  one  foot  in 
the  grave,  these  are  now  idle  projects  for  me.  My  business  is  to 
beguile  the  wearisomeness  of  declining  life,  as  I  endeavor  to  do, 
by  the  delights  of  classical  reading  and  of  mathematical  truths, 
and  by  the  consolations  of  a  sound  philosophy,  equally  indiffer- 
ent to  hope  and  fear. 

I  take  the  liberty  of  observing  that  you  are  not  a  true  disciple 
of  our  master  Epicurus,  in  indulging  the  indolence  to  which  you 
say  you  are  yielding.  One  of  his  canons,  you  know,  was  that 
"  that  indulgence  which  presents  a  greater  pleasure,  or  produces 
a  greater  pain,  is  to  be  avoided."  Your  love  of  repose  will  lead, 
in  its  progress,  to  a  suspension  of  healthy  exercise,  a  relaxation 
of  mind,  an  indifference  to  everything  around  you,  and  finally  to 
a  debility  of  body,  and  hebetude  of  mind,  the  farthest  of  all 
things  from  the  happiness  which  the  well-regulated  indulgences 
of  Epicurus  ensure ;  fortitude,  you  know,  is  one  of  his  four  car- 
dinal virtues.  That  teaches  us  to  meet  and  suriiiount  diflicul- 
ties;  not  to  fly  from  them,  like  cowards;  and  to  fly,  too,  in  vain, 
for  they  will  meet  and  arrest  us  at  every  turn  of  our  road.  Weigh 
this  matter  well;  brace  yourself  up ;  take  a  seat  with  Correa,  and 
come  and  see  the  finest  portion  of  your  country,  which,  if  you 
have  not  forgotten,  you  still  do  not  know,  because  it  is  no  longer 
the  same  as  when  you  knew  it.     It  wfll  add  much  to  the  happi- 


COREESPOKDENOE.  141 

ness  of  my  recovery  to  be  able  to  receive  Correa  and  yourself, 
and  prove  the  estimation  in  which  I  hold  5-ou  both.  Come,  too, 
and  see  our  incipient  University,  which  has  advanced  with  great 
activity  this  year.  By  the  end  of  the  next,  we  shall  have  elegant 
accommodations  for  seven  professors,  and  the  year  following  the 
professors  themselves.  No  secondary  character  will  be  received 
among  them.  Either  the  ablest  which  America  or  Europe  can 
furnish,  or  none  at  all.  They  will  give  us  the  selected  society 
of  a  great  city  separated  from  the  dissipations  and  levities  of  its 
ephemeral  insects. 

I  am  glad  the  bust  of  Condorcet  has  been  saved  and  so  well 
placed.  His  genius  should  be  before  us;  while  the  lamentable, 
but  singular  act  of  ingratitude  which  tarnished  his  latter  days, 
may  be  thrown  behind  us. 

I  will  place  under  this  a  syllabus  of  the  doctrines  of  Epicurus, 
somewhat  in  the  lapidary  style,  which  I  wrote  some  twenty  years 
ago,  a  like  one  of  the  philosophy  of  Jesus,  of  nearly  the  same 
age,  is  too  long  to  bo  copied.  Vale,  et  tibi  persuade  carissimum 
te  esse  niihi. 

Syllabus  of  the  doctrines  of  Epicurus. 

Physical. — The  Universe  eternal. 

Its  parts,  great  and  small,  interchangeable. 

Matter  and  Void  alone. 

Motion  inherent  in  matter  which  is  weighty  and  declining. 

Eternal  circulation  of  the  elements  of  bodies. 

Gods,  an  order  of  beings  next  superior  to  man,  enjoying  m 
their  sphere,  their  own  felicities ;  but  not  meddling  with  the  con- 
cerns of  the  scale  of  beings  below  them. 

Moral. — Happiness  the  aim  of  life. 

Virtue  the  foundation  of  happiness. 

Utility  the  test  of  virtue. 

Pleasure  active  and  In-do-lent. 

In-do-lence  is  the  absence  of  pain,  the  true  felicity. 

Active,  consists  in  agreeable  motion ;  it  is  not  happiness,  but 
the  means  to  produce  it. 


142  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Thus  the  absence  of  hunger  is  an  article  of  felicity ;  eating 
the  means  to  obtain  it. 

The  summiim  bonum  is  to  be  not  pained  in  body,  nor  troubled 
in  mind. 

i.  e.  In-do-lence  of  body,  tranquillity  of  mind. 

To  procure  tranquillity  of  mind  we  must  avoid  desire  and  fear, 
the  two  principal  diseases  of  the  mind. 

Man  is  a  free  agent. 

Virtue  consists  in  1.  Prudence.  2.  Temperance.  3.  Fortitude. 
4.  Justice. 

To  which  are  opposed,  1.  Folly.  2.  Desire.  3.  Fear.  4.  Deceit. 


TO    J.    ADAMS,  ESq. 

McKNTicELLn,  November  7,  1819. 

Dear  Sir, — Three  long  and  dangerous  illnesses  within  the  last 
twelve  months,  must  -apologize  for  my  long  silence  towards  you. 

The  paper  bubble  is  then  burst.  This  is  what  you  and  I,  and 
every  reasoning  man,  seduced  by  no  obliquity  of  mind  or  inter- 
est, have  long  foreseen  ;  yet  its  disastrous  effects  are  not  the  less 
for  having  been  foreseen.  We  were  laboring  under  a  dropsical 
fulness  of  circulating  medium.  Nearly  all  of  it  is  now  called  in 
by  the  banks,  who  have  the  regulation  of  the  safety-valves  of 
our  fortunes,  and  who  condense  and  explode  them  at  their  will. 
Lands  in  this  State  cannot  now  be  sold  for  a  year's  rent ;  and 
unless  our  Legislature  have  wisdom  enough  to  effect  a  remedy 
by  a  gradual  diminution  only  of  the  medium,  there  will  be  a  gen- 
eral revolution  of  property  in  this  State.  Over  our  own  paper 
and  that  of  other  States  coming  among  us,  they  have  competent 
powers;  over  that  of  the  bank  of  the  United  States  there  is  doubt, 
not  here,  but  elsewhere.  That  bank  will  probably  conform  vol- 
untarily to  such  regulations  as  the  Legislature  may  prescribe  for 
the  others.  If  they  do  not,  we  must  shut  their  doors,  and  join 
the  other  States  which  deny  the  right  of  Congress  to  establish 
banks,  and  solicit  them  to  agree  to  some  mode  of  settling  this 


COEEESPON"DEN"OE.  I43 

constitutional  question.  They  have  themselves  twice  decided 
against  their  right,  and  twice  for  it.  Many  of  the  States  have 
been  uniform  in  denying  it,  and  between  such  parties  the  Con- 
stitution has  provided  no  umpire.  I  do  not  know  particularly 
the  extent  of  this  distress  in  the  other  States ;  but  southwardly 
and  westwardly  I  believe  all  are  involved  in  it.  God  bless  you, 
and  preserve  you  many  years. 


TO    COLONEL    JOHN    NICHOLAS. 

MoNTioELLo,  Novembei'  10,  1819. 

SiK, — Your  letter,  and  the  draught  of  a  memorial  proposed  to 
be  presented  to  the  Legislature,  are  duly  received.  With  respect 
to  impressions  from  any  differences  of  political  opinion,  whether 
major  or  minor,  alluded  to  in  your  letter,  I  have  none.  I  left 
them  all  behind  me  on  quitting  Washington,  where  alone  the 
state  of  things  had,  till  then,  required  some  attention  to  them. 
Nor  was  that  the  lightest  part  of  the  load  I  was  there  disburthened 
of;  and  could  I  permit  myself  to  believe  that  with  the  change 
of  circumstances  a  corresponding  change  had  taken  place  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  differed  from  me,  and  that  I  now  stand  in 
the  peace  and  good  will  of  my  fellow-citizens  generally,  it  would 
indeed  be  a  sweetening  ingredient  in  the  last  dregs  of  my  life. 
It  is  not  then  from  that  source  that  my  testimony  may  be  scanty, 
but  from  a  decaying  memory,  illy  retaining  things  of  recent  trans- 
action, and  scarcely  with  any  distinctness  those  of  forty  years 
back,  the  period  to  which  your  memorial  refers :  general  im- 
pressions of  them  -remain,  but  details  are  mostly  obliterated. 

Of  the  transfer  of  your  corps  from  the  general  to  the  State 
line,  and  the  other  facts  in  the  memorial  preceding  my  entrance 
on  the  administration  of  the  State  government,  June  2,  1779,  I, 
of  course,  have  no  knowledge  ;  but  public  documents,  as  well  as 
living  witnesses,  will  probably  supply  this.  In  1780,  I  remem- 
ber your  appointment  to  a  command  in  the  militia  sent  under 
General  Stevens  to  the  aid   of  the  Carolinas,  of  which  fact  the 


144  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

commission  signed  by  myself  is  sufficient  proof.  But  I  have  no 
particular  recollections  which  respect  yourself  personally  in  that 
service.  Of  what  took  place  during  Arnold's  invasion  in  the  sub- 
sequent winter  I  have  more  knowledge,  because  so  much  passed 
under  my  own  eye,  and  I  have  the  benefit  of  some  notes  to  aid 
my  memory.  In  the  short  interval  of  fifty-seven  hours  between 
our  knowing  they  had  entered  James  river  and  their  actual  de- 
barkation at  Westover,  we  could  get  together  but  a  small  body  of 
militia,  (my  notes  say  of  three  hundred  men  only, )  chiefly  from  the 
city  and  its  immediate  vicinities.  You  were  placed  in  the  com- 
mand of  these,  and  ordered  to  proceed  to  the  neighborhood  of 
the  enemy,  not  with  any  view  to  face  them  directly  with  so 
small  a  force,  but  to  hang  on  their  skirts,  and  to  check  their 
march  as  much  as  could  be  done,  to  give  time  for  the  more  dis- 
tant militia  to  assemble.  The  enemy  were  not  to  be  delayed, 
however,  and  were  in  Richmond  in  twenty-four  hours  from  their 
being  formed  on  shore  at  Westover.  The  day  before  their  ar- 
rival at  Richmond,  I  had  sent  my  family  to  Tuckahoe,  as  the 
memorial  states,  at  which  place  I  joined  them  about  1  o'clock  of 
that  night,  having  attended  late  at  Westham,  to  have  the  public 
stores  and  papers  thrown  across  the  river.  You  came  up  to  us 
at  Tuckahoe  the  next  morning,  and  accompanied  me,  I  think,  to 
Britton's  opposite  Westham,  to  see  about  the  further  safety  of  the 
arms  and  other  property.  Whether  you  stayed  there  to  look 
after  them,  or  went  with  me  to  the  heights  of  Manchester,  and 
returned  thence  to  Britton's,  I  do  not  recollect.  The  enemy 
evacuated  Richmond  at  noon  of  the  5th  of  January,  having  re- 
mained there  but  twenty-three  hours.  I  returned  to  it  in  the 
morning  of  the  8th,  they  being  still  encamped  at  Westover  and 
Berkley,  and  yourself  and  corps  at  the  Forest.  They  re-em- 
barked at  1  o'clock  of  the  10th.  The  particulars  of  your  move- 
ments down  the  river,  to  oppose  their  re-landing  at  different 
points,  I  do  not  specifically  recollect,  but,  as  stated  in  the  me- 
morial, they  are  so  much  in  agreement  with  my  general  impress- 
ions, that  I  have  no  doubt  of  their  correctness,  and  I  know  that 
your  conduct  from  the  first  advance  of  the  enemy  to  his  depar- 


COREESPONDENOE.  145 

ture,  "was  approved  by  myself  and  by  others  generally.  The 
rendezvous  of  the  militia  at  the  Tuckahoe  bridge,  and  your  hav- 
ing the  command  of  them,  I  think  I  also  remember,  but  nothing 
of  their  subsequent  movements.  The  legislature  had  adjourned 
to  meet  at  Charlottesville,  where,  at  the  expiration  of  my  second 
year,  I  declined  a  re-election  in  the  belief  that  a  military  man 
would  be  more  likely  to  render  services  adequate  to  the  exigencies 
of  the  times.  Of  the  subsequent  facts,  therefore,  stated  in  the 
memorial,  I  have  no  knowledge. 

This,  Sir,  is  the  sum  of  the  information  I  am  able  to  give  on 
the  subjects  of  your  memorial,  and  if  it  may  contribute  to  the 
purposes  of  justice  in  your  case,  I  shall  be  happy  that  in  bearing 
testimony  to  the  truth,  I  shall  have  rendered  you  a  just  service. 
I  return  the  memorial  and  commission,  as  requested,  and  pray 
you  to  accept  my  respectful  salutations. 


TO    MR.    HIVES. 

iloNTiCELLo,  November  28,  1819. 

Dear  Sir, — The  distresses  of  our  country,  produced  first  b^ 
the  flood,  then  by  the  ebb  of  bank  paper,  are  such  as  cannot  fail 
to  engage  the  interposition  of  the  legislature.  Many  propositions 
will,  of  course,  be  offered,  from  all  of  which  something  may 
probably  be  culled  to  make  a  good  whole.  I  explained  to  you 
my  project,  when  I  had  the  pleasure  of  possessing  you  here  ;  and 
I  now  send  its  outline  in  writing,  as  I  believe  I  promised  you. 
Although  preferable  things  will  I  hope  be  offered,  yet  some  twig 
of  this  may  perhaps  be  thought  worthy  of  being  engrafted  on  a 
better  stock.  But  I  send  it  with  no  particular  object  or  request, 
but  to  use  it  as  you  please.  Suppress  it,  suggest  it,  sound  opin- 
ions, or  anything  else,  at  will,  only  Keeping  my  name  unmen- 
tioned,  for  which  purpose  it  is  copied  in  another  hand,  being 
ever  solicitous  to  avoid  all  offence  which  is  heavily  felt,  when 
retired  from  the  bustle  and  contentions  of  the  world.  If  we  suffer 
the  moral  of  the  present  lesson  to  pass  away  without  improvement 

VOL.  VII.  10 


146  JEFFERSON'S    W0RK<5 

by  the  eternal  suppression  of  bank  paper,  then  indeed  is  the  con 
dition  of  our  country  desperate,  until  the  slow  advance  of  public 
instruction  shall  give  to  our  functionaries  the  wisdom  of  theii 
station.      Vale,  et  tibi  persuade  carisshnum  te  mihi  esse. 

Plan  for  reducing  the  circulating  medium. 

The  plethory  of  circulating  medinm  which  raised  the  prices 
of  everything  to  several  times  their  ordinary  and  standard  value, 
in  which  state  of  things  many  and  heavy  debts  were  contracted  ; 
and  the  sudden  withdrawing  too  great  a  proportion  of  that  me- 
dium, and  reduction  of  prices  far  below  that  standard,  constitute 
the  disease  under  which  we  are  now  laboring,  and  which  must 
end  in  a  general  revolution  of  property,  if  some  remedy  is  not  ap- 
plied. That  remedy  is  clearly  a  gradual  redaction  of  the  medium 
to  its  standard  level,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  level  which  a  metallic 
medium  will  always  find  for  itself,  so  as  to  he.  in  equilibrio  with 
that  of  the  nations  with  which  we  have  commerce. 

To  effect  this, 

Let  the  whole  of  the  present  paper  medium  be  suspended  in 
its  circulation  after  a  certain  and  not  distant  day. 

Ascertafn  by  proper  inquiry  the  greatest  sum  of  it  which  has 
at  any  one  time  been  in  actual  circulation. 

Take  a  certain  term  of  years  for  its  gradual  reduction,  suppose 
\t  to  be  five  years ;  then  let  the  solvent  banks  issue  I  of  that 
amount  in  new  notes,  to  be  attested  by  a  public  officer,  as  a  se- 
curity that  neither  more  or  less  is  issued,  and  to  he  given  out  in 
exchange  for  the  suspended  notes,  and  the  surplus  in  discount. 

Let  ^th  of  these  notes  bear  on  their  face  that  the  bank  will 
discharge  them  with  specie  at  the  end  of  one  year  ;  another  5th 
at  the  end  of  two  years  ;  a  third  5th  at  the  end  of  three  years  ; 
and  so  of  the  4th  and  5th.  They  will  be  sure  to  be  brought  in' 
at  their  respective  periods  of  redemption. 

Make  it  a  high  offence  to  receive  or  pass  within  this  State  a 
note  of  any  other. 

There  is  little  doubt  that  our  banks  will  agree  readily  to  this 
operation ;  if  they  refuse,  declare  their  charters  forfeited  by  their 


COEEESPONDElSrOE.  147 

former  irregularities,  and  give  summary  process  against  them  for 
the  suspended  notes. 

The  Bank  of  the  United  States  will  probably  concur  also  ;  if 
not,  shut  their  doors  and  join  the  other  States  in  respectful,  but 
firm  applications  to  Congress,  to  concur  in  constituting  a  tri- 
bunal (a  special  convention,  e.  g.)  for  settling  amicably  the  ques- 
tion of  then-  right  to  institute  a  bank,  and  that  also  of  the  States 
to  do  the  same. 

A  stay-law  for  the  suspension  of  executions,  and  their  discharge 
at  five  annual  instalments,  should  be  accommodated  to  these 
measures. 

Interdict  forever,  to  both  the  State  and  national  governments, 
the  power  of  establishing  any  paper  bank  ;  for  without  this  in- 
terdiction, we  shall  have  the  same  ebbs  and  flows  of  medium, 
and  the  same  revolutions  of  property  to  go  through  every  twenty 
or  thirty  years. 

In  this  way  the  value  of  property,  keeping  pace  nearly  with 
the  sum  of  circulating  medium,  will  descend  gradually  to  its 
proper  level,  at  the  rate  of  about  i  every  year,  the  sacrifices  of 
what  shall  be  sold  for  payment  of  the  first  instalments  of  debts 
will  be  moderate,  and  time  will  be  given  for  economy  and  indus- 
try to  come  in  aid  of  those  subsequent.  Certainly  no  nation 
ever  before  abandoned  to  the  avarice  and  jugglings  of  private 
individuals  to  regulate,  according  to  their  own  interests,  the 
quantum  of  circulating  medium  for  the  nation,  to  inflate,  by 
deluges  of  paper,  the  nominal  prices  of  property,  and  then  to  buy 
up  that  property  at  Is.  in  the  pound,  having  first  withdrawn  the 
» floating  medium  which  might  endanger  a  competition  in  pur- 
chase. Yet  this  is  what  has  been  done,  and  will  be  done,  unless 
stayed  by  the  protecting  hand  of  the  legislature.  The  evil  has 
been  produced  by  the  error  of  their  sanction  of  this  ruinous  ma- 
chinery of  banks ;  and  justice,  wisdom,  duty,  all  require  that 
they  should  interpose  and  arrest  it  before  the  schemes  of  plunder 
and  spoliation  desolate  the  country.  It  is  believed  that  Harpiea 
are  already  hoarding  their  money  to  commence  these  scenes  on 
the  separation 'of  the  legislature;  and  we  know  that  lands  have 
been  already  sold  under  the  hammer  for  less  than  a  year's  rent. 


148  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 


TO   JOHX   ADAMS. 

MoNTiOELLO,  December  10,  ISiy. 

Deak  Sir, — I  have  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your  favoi 
of  November  the  23d.  The  banks,  bankrupt  law,  manufactures, 
Spanish  treaty,  are  nothing.  These  are  occurences  which,  like 
waves  in  a  storm,  will  pass  under  the  ship.  But  the  Missouri 
question  is  a  breaker  on  which  we  lose  the  Missouri  country  by 
revolt,  and  what  more,  God  only  knows.  From  the  battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill  to  the  treaty  of  Paris,  we  never  had  so  ominous  a 
question.  It  even  damps  the  joy  with  which  I  hear  of  your 
high  health,  and  welcomes  to  me  the  consequences  of  my  want 
of  it.  I  thank  God  that  I  shall  not  live  to  witness  its  issue.  Sed 
hcBC  hactenus. 

I  have  beeniamusing  myself  latterly  with  reading  the  volumi- 
nous letters  of  Cicero.  They  certainly  breathe  the  purest  effu- 
sions of  an  exalted  patriot,  while  the  parricide  Cassar  is  lost  in 
odious  contrast.  When  the  enthusiasm,  however,  kindled  by 
Cicero's  pen  and  principles,  subsides  into  cool  reflection,  I  ask 
myself,  what  was  that  government  which  the  virtues  of  Cicero 
were  so  zealous  to  restore,  and  the  ambition  of  Caesar  to  subvert  ? 
And  if  Cassar  had  been  as  virtuous  as  he  was  daring  and  saga- 
cious, what  could  he,  even  in  the  plenitude  of  his  usurped  pow- 
er, have  done  to  lead  his  fellow  citizens  into  good  government  ? 
I  do  not  say  to  restore  it,  because  they  never  had  it,  from  the 
rape  of  the  Sabines  to  the  ravages  of  the  Ca3sars.  If  their  peo- 
ple indeed  had  been,  like  ourselves,  enlightened,  peaceable,  and 
really  free,  the  answer  would  be  obvious.  "  Restore  indepcn'-# 
dence  to  all  your  foreign  conquests,  relieve  Italy  from  the  govern- 
ment of  the  rabble  of  Rome,  consult  it  as  a  nation  entitled  to 
self-government,  and  do  its  will."  But  steeped  in  corruption, 
vice  and  venality,  as  the  whole  nation  was,  (and  nobody  had 
done  more  than  Caesar  to  corrupt  it,)  what  could  even  Cicero, 
Cato,  Brutus  have  done,  had  it  been  referred  to  them  to  establish 
a  good  government  for  their  country  ?  They  had  no  ideas  of 
government  themselves,  but  of  their  degenerate  Senate,  nor  the 


CORRESPONDENCE,  I49 

people  of  liberty,  but  of  the  factious  opposition  of  thtir  Tribunes. 
They  had  afterwards  their  Tituses,  their  Trajans  and  Antoni- 
nuses,  who  had  the  will  to  make  them  happy,  and  the  power  to 
mould  their  governmant  into  a  good  and  permanent  form.  But 
it  would  seem  as  if  they  could  not  see  their  way  clearly  to  do  it. 
No  government  can  continue  good,  but  under  the  control  of  the 
people  ;  and  their  people  were  so  demoralized  and  depraved,  as  to 
be  incapable  of  exercising  a  wholesome  control.  Their  refor- 
mation then  was  to  be  taken  up  ab  incunabulis.  Their  minds 
were  to  be  informed  by  education  what  is  right  and  what  wrong  ; 
to  be  encouraged  in  habits  of  virtue,  and  deterred  from  those  of 
vice  by  the  dread  of  punishments,  proportioned  indeed,  but  irre- 
missible  ;  in  all  cases,  to  follow  truth  as  the  only  safe  guide,  and 
to  eschew  error,  which  bewilders  us  in  one  false  consequence 
after  another,  in  endless  succession.  These  are  the  inculcations 
necessary  to  render  the  people  a  sure  basis  for  the  structure  of 
order  and  good  government.  But  this  would  have  been  an  oper- 
ation of  a  generation  or  two,  at  least,  within  which  period  would 
have  succeeded  many  Neros  and  Commoduses,  who  would  have 
quashed  the  whole  process.  I  confess  then,  I  can  neither  see 
what  Cicero,  Cato  and  Brutus,  united  and  uncontrolled,  could 
have  devised  to  lead  their  people  into  good  government,  nor  how 
this  enigma  can  be  solved,  nor  how  further  shown  why  it  has 
been  the  fate  of  that  delightful  country  never  to  have  known,  to 
this  day,  and  through  a  course  of  five  and  twenty  hundred  years, 
the  history  of  which  we  possess,  one  single  day  of  free  and  ra- 
tional government.  Your  intimacy  with  their  history,  ancient 
middle  and  modern,  your  familiarity  with  the  improvements  in 
the  science  of  government  at  this  time,  will  enable  you,  if  any 
body,  to  go  back  with  our  principles  and  opinions  to  the  times 
of  Cicero,  Cato  and  Brutus,  and  tell  us  by  what  process  these 
great  and"  virtuous  men  could  have  led  so  unenlightened  and  vi- 
tiated a  people  into  freedom  and  good  government,  et  eris  mihi 
magnus  Apollo.  Cura  ut  valeas,  et  tibi  persuadeas  carisjimum 
te  mihi  esse. 


150  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFERSON. 

MoNTEziLLO,  December  21,  1819. 

Dear  Sir, — I  must  answer  your  great  question  of  the  10th 
in  the  words  of  Dalembert  to  his  correspondent,  who  abked  him 
what  is  matter — "  Je  vous  avoue  je  ne  sqais  rien.''''  In  some 
part  of  my  life  I  record  a  great  work  of  a  Scotchman  on  the 
court  of  Augustus,  in  which,  with  much  learning,  hard  study, 
and  fatiguing  labor,  he  undertook  to  prove  that  had  Brutus  and 
Cassius  been  conqueror,  they  would  have  restored  virtue  and 
liberty  to  Rome. 

Mais  je  n^en  crois  rien.  Have  you  ever  found  in  history  one 
single  example  of  a  nation,  thoroughly  corrupted,  that  was  after- 
wards restored  to  virtue,  and  without  virtue  there  can  be  no  po- 
litical liberty. 

If  I  were  a  Calvinist,  I  might  pray  that  God  by  a  miracle  of 
divine  grace  would  instantaneously  convert  a  whole  contaminated 
nation  from  turpitude  to  purity  ;  but  even  in  this  I  should  be  in- 
consistent, for  the  fatalism  of  Mahometanism,  Materialists,  Athe- 
ists, Pantheists,  and  Calvinists,  and  church  of  England  articles, 
appear  to  me  to  render  all  prayer  futile  and  absurd.  The  French 
and  the  Dutch,  in  our  day,  have  attempted  reforms  and  revolu- 
tions. We  know  the  results,  and  I  fear  the  English  reformers 
will  have  no  better  success. 

Will  you  tell  me  how  to  prevent  riches  from  becoming  the  ef- 
fects of  temperance  and  industry.  Will  you  tell  me  how  to  pre- 
vent riches  from  producing  luxury.  Will  you  tell  me  how  to 
prevent  luxury  from  producing  effeminacy,  intoxication,  extrava- 
gance, vice  and  folly  ?  When  you  will  answer  me  these  ques- 
tions, I  hope  I  may  venture  to  answer  yours ;  yet  all  these  ought 
not  to  discourage  us  from  exertion,  for  with  my  friend  Jeb,  I  be- 
lieve no  effort  in  favor  of  virtue  is  lost,  and  all  good  men  ought 
to  struggle  both  by  their  council  and  example. 

The  Missouri  question,  1  hope,  will  follow  the  other  waves 
under  the  ship,  and  do  no  harm.  I  know  it  is  high  treason  to 
express  a  doubt  of  the  perpetual  duration  of  our  vast  American 


UOREESPONDENOE.  151 

empire,  and  our  free  institution  ;  and  I  say  as  devoutly  as  father 
Paul,  estor  perpetua,  but  I  am  sometimes  Cassandra  enough  to 
dream  that  another  Hamilton,  and  another  Burr,  might  rend  this 
mighty  fabric  in  twain,  or  perhaps  into  a  leash  ;  and  a  few  more 
choice  spirits  of  the  same  stamp,  might  produce  as  many  nations 
in  North  America  as  there  are  in  Europe. 

To  return  to  the  Romans.  I  never  could  discover  that  they 
possessed  much  virtue,  or  real  liberty.  Their  Patricians  were  in 
general  griping  usurers,  and  tyrannical  creditors  in  all  ages. 
Pride,  strength,  and  courage,  were  all  the  virtues  that  composed 
their  national  characters  ;  a  few  of  their  nobles  effecting  sim- 
plicity, frugality,  and  piety,  perhaps  really  possessing  them,  ac- 
quired popularity  amongst  the  plebeians,  and  extended  the  power 
and  dominions  of  the  republic,  and  advanced  in  glory  till  riches, 
and  luxury  come  in,  sat  like  an  incubus  on  the  Republic,  victam 
que  ulcissitur  orbem. 

Our  winter  sets  in  a  fortnight  earlier  than  usual,  and  is  pretty 
severe.  I  hope  you  have  fairer  skies,  and  milder  air.  Wishing 
your  health  may  last  as  long  as  your  life,  and  your  life  as  long 
as  you  desire  it,  I  am,  dear  Sir,  respectfully  and  affectionately, 


TO    H.    NELSON,  ESq. 

MoNTicELLo,  March  12,  1820 

I  thank  you,  dear  Sir,  for  the  information  in  your  favor  of  the 
4th  instant,  of  the  settlement,  for  the  present,  of  the  Missouri 
question.  I  am  so  completely  withdrawn  from  all  attention  to 
public  matters,  that  nothing  less  could  arouse  me  than  the  defi- 
nition of  a  geographical  line,  which  on  an  abstract  principle  is  to 
become  the  line  of  separation  of  these  State?,  and  to  render  des- 
perate the  hope  that  man  can  ever  enjoy  the  two  blessings  of 
peace  and  self-government.  The  question  sleeps  for  the  present, 
but  is  not  dead.  This  State  is  in  a  condition  of  unparalleled  dis- 
tress. The  sudden  reduction  of  the  circulating  medium  from 
a  plethory  to  all  but  annihilation  is  producing  an  entire  revolution 


152  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

of  fortune.  In  other  places  I  have  known  lands  sold  by  the 
sheriff  for  one  year's  rent ;  beyond  the  mountain  we  hear  of 
good  slaves  selling  for  one  hundred  dollars,  good  horses  for  five 
dollars,  and  the  sheriffs  generally  the  purchasers.  Our  produce 
is  now  selling  at  market  for  one-third  of  its  price,  before  this 
commercial  catastrophe,  say  flour  at  three  and  a  quarter  and  three 
and  a  half  dollars  the  barrel.  We  should  have  less  right  to  ex- 
pect relief  from  our  legislators  if  they  had  been  the  establishers 
of  the  unwise  system  of  banks.  A  remedy  to  a  certain  degree 
was  practicable,  that  of  reducing  the  quantum  of  circulation 
gradually  to  a  level  with  that  of  the  countries  with  which  we 
have  commerce,  and  an  eternal  abjuration  of  paper.  But  they 
have  adjourned  without  doing  anything.  I  fear  local  insurrec- 
■  tions  against  these  hori'ible  sacrifices  of  property.  In  every  con- 
dition of  trouble  or  tranquillity  be  assured  of  my  constant  esteem 
and  respect. 


TO    MB.    ADAMS. 

MoNTicKLi.o,  March  14,  1820. 

Deah  Sir, — A  continuation  of  poor  health  makes  me  an  ir- 
regular correspondent.  I  am,  therefore,  your  debtor  for  the  two 
letters  of  January  20th  and  February  21st.  It  was  after  you 
left  Europe  that  Dugald  Stuart,  concerning  whom  you  inquire, 
and  Lord  Dare,  second  son  of  the  Marquis  of  Lausdovvn,  came 
to  Paris.  They  brought  me  a  letter  from  Lord  Wycorpbe,  whom 
you  knew.  I  became  immediately  intimate  with  Stuart,  calling 
mutually  on  each  other  and  almost  daily,  during  their  stay  at 
Paris,  which  was  of  some  months.  Lord  Dare  was  a  young  man 
of  imagination,  with  occasional  flashes  indicating  deep  penetra- 
tion, but  of  much  caprice,  and  little  judgment.  He  has  been 
long  dead,  and  the  family  title  is  now,  I  believe,  in  the  third  son, 
who  has  shown  in  Parliament  talents  of  a  superior  order.  Stuart 
is  a  great  man,  and  among  the  most  honest  living.  I  have  heard 
nothing  of  his  dying  at  top,  as  you  suppose.  Mr.  Ticknor,  how- 
ever, can  give  you  the  best  information  on  that  subject,  as  he 


OOERESPONDENOE.  153 

must  have  heard  particularly  of  him  when  in  Edinburgh,  al- 
though I  believe  he  did  not  see  him.  I  have  understood  he  was 
then  in  London  superintending  the  publication  of  a  new  work. 
I  consider  him  and  Tracy  as  the  ablest  metaphysicians  living  ; 
by  which  I  mean  investigators  of  the  thinking  faculty  of  man. 
Stuart  seems  to  have  given  its  natural  history  from  facts  and  ob- 
servations ;  Tracy  its  modes  of  action  and  dedaction,  which  he 
cplls  Logic,  and  Ideology  ;  and  Cabanis,  in  his  Physique  et 
Morale  de  I'Homme,  has  investigated  anatomically,  and  most  in- 
geniously, the  particular  organs  in  the  human  structure  which 
may  most  probably  exercise  that  faculty.  And  they  ask  why 
may  not  the  mode  of  action  called  thought,  have  been  given  to 
a  material  organ  of  peculiar  structure,  as  that  of  magnetism  is  to 
the  needle,  or  of  elasticity  to  the  spring  by  a  particular  manipu- 
lation of  the  steel.  They  observe  that  on  ignition  of  the  needle 
or  spring,  their  magnetism  and  elasticity  cease.  So  on  dissolu- 
tion of  the  material  organ  by  death,  its  action  of  thought  may 
cease  also,  and  that  nobody  supposes  that  the  magnetism  or  elas- 
ticity retire  to  hold  a  substantive  and  distinct  existence.  These 
were  qualities  only  of  particular  conformations  of  matter  ;  change 
the  conformation,  and  its  qualities  change  also.  Mr.  Locke,  you 
know,  and  other  materialists,  have  charged  with  blasphemy  the 
spiritualists  who  have  denied  the  Creator  the  power  of  endowing 
certain  forms  of  matter  with  the  faculty  of  thought.  These, 
however,  are  speculations  and  subtleties  in  Avhich,  for  my  own 
part,  I  have  little  indulged  myself.  When  I  meet  with  a  propo- 
sition beyond  finite  comprehension,  I  abandon  it  as  I  do  a  weight 
which  human  strength  cannot  lift,  and  I  think  ignorance,  in  these 
cases,  is  truly  the  softest  pillow  on  which  I  can  lay  my  head. 
Were  it  necessary,  however,  to  form  an  opinion,  I  confess  I 
should,  with  Mr.  Locke,  prefer  swallowing  one  incomprehensi- 
bility rather  than  two.  It  requires  one  effort  only  to  admit  the 
single  incomprehensibility  of  matter  endowed  with  thought,  and 
two  to  believe,  first  that  of  an  existence  called  spirit,  of  which 
vre  have  neither  evidence  nor  idea,  and  then  secondly  how  that 
spirit,  which  has  neither  extension  nor  solidity,  can  put  material 


154  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

organs  into  motion.  These  are  things  which  you  and  I  may 
perhaps  know  ere  long.  We  have  so  lived  as  to  fear  neither 
horn  of  the  dilemma.  We  have,  willingly,  done  injury  to  no 
man  ;  and  have  done  for  our  country  the  good  which  has  fallen 
in  our  way,  so  far  as  commensurate  with  the  faculties  given  us. 
That  we  have  not  done  more  than  we  could,  cannot  be  imputed 
to  us  as  a  crime  before  any  tribunal.  I  look,  therefore,  to  the 
crisis,  as  I  am  sure  you  also  do,  as  one  "  qui  sunimutn  nee  metuii 
diem  nee  optat."  In  the  meantime  be  our  last  as  cordial  as  were 
our  first  affections. 


TO    THE    HONORABLE    MARK    LANGDON    HILL. 

MoNTiCELLO,  April  5,  1820. 

Sir, — A  near  relation  of  my  late  friend  Governor  Langdon, 
needs  no  apology  for  addressing  a  letter  to  me,  that  relationship 
giving  sufficient  title  to  all  my  respect.  We  were  fellow  labor- 
ers from  the  beginning  of  the  first  to  the  accomplishment  of  the 
second  revolution  in  our  government,  of  the  same  zeal  and  the 
■same  sentiments,  and  I  shall  honor  his  memory  while  memory 
remains  to  me.  The  letter  you  mention  is  proof  of  my  friend- 
ship and  unreserved  confidence  in  him  ;  it  was  written  in  warm 
times,  and  is  therefore  too  warmly  expressed  for  the  more  rec- 
onciled temper  of  the  present  day.  I  must  pray  you,  therefore, 
not  to  let  it  get  before  the  public,  lest  it  rekindle  a  flame  which 
burnt  too  long  and  too  fiercely  against  me.  It  was  my  lot  to  be 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  column  which  made  the  first  breach  in 
the  ramparts  of  federalism,  and  to  be  charged,  on  that  event,  with 
the  duty  of  changing  the  course  of  the  government  from  what 
we  deemed  a  monarchical,  to  its  republican  tack.  This  made 
me  the  mark  for  every  shaft  which  calumny  and  falsehood  could 
point  against  me.  I  bore  them  'with  resignation,  as  one  of  the 
duties  imposed  on  me  by  my  post.  But  I  assure  you  it  was 
among  the  most  painful  duties  from  which  I  hoped  to  find  relief 
in  retirement.  Tranquillity  is  the  summum  honum  of  old  age 
and  ill  health,  and  nothing  could  so  much  disturb  this  with  me 


GOEEESPONDENCE.  155 

as  to  awaken  angry  feelings  from  the  slumber  in  which  I  wish 
them  ever  to  remain.  I  beseech  you  then,  good  Sir,  in  the  name 
of  my  departed  friend,  not  to  bring  on  me  a  contention  which 
neither  duty  nor  public  good  require  me  to  encounter. 

I  regret  the  circumstances  which  have  .deprived  us  of  the  pleas- 
ure of  your  visit,  but  console  myself  with  the  French  proverb 
that  "  all  is  not  lost  which  is  deferred,"  and  the  hope  that  more 
favorable  circumstances  will  some  day  give  us  that  gratification. 
I  congratulate  you  on  the  sleep  of  the  Missouri  question.  I  wish 
I  could  say  on  its  death,  but  of  this  I  despair.  The  idea  of  a 
geographical  line  once  suggested  will  brood  in  the  minds  of  all 
those  who  prefer  the  gratification  of  their  .ungovernable  passions 
to  the  peace  and  union  of  their  country.  If  I  do  not  contem- 
plate this  subject  with  pleasure,  I  do  sincerely  that  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  Maine,  and  the  wise  choice  they  have  made  of 
General  King  in  the  agency  of  their  affairs,  and  I  tender  to  your- 
self the  assurance  of  my  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    WILLIAM    SHOKT. 

MoNTicELLo,   April  13,  1820. 

Dear  Sir, — Your  favor  of  March  the  27th  is  received,  and  as 
you  request,  a  copy  of  the  syllabus  is  now  enclosed.  It  was 
originally  written  to  Dr.  Rush.  On  his  death,  fearing  that  the 
inquisition  of  the  public  might  get  hold  of  it,  I  asked  the  return 
of  it  from  the  family,  which  they  kindly  complied  with.  At 
the  request  of  another  friend,  I  had  given  him  a  copy.  He  lent 
it  to  Ids  friend  to  read,  who  copied  it,  and  in  a  few  months  it 
appeared  in  the  Theological  Magazine  of  London.  Happily  that 
repository  is  scarcely  known  in  this  country,  and  the  syllabus, 
therefore,  is  still  a  secret,  and  in  your  hands  I  am  sure  it  will  con- 
tinue so. 

Bat  while  this  syllabus  is  meant  to  place  the  character  of  Jesus 
in  its  true  and  high  light,  as  no  impostor  himself,  but  a  great  re- 
former of  the  Hebrew  code  of  religion,  it  is  not  to  be  understood 


156  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

that  I  am  with  him  in  all  his  doctrines.  I  am  a  Materialist ;  he 
takes  the  side  of  Spiritualism  ;  he  preaches  the  efficacy  of  re- 
pentance towards  forgiveness  of  sin  ;  I  require  a  counterpoise  of 
good  works  to  redeem  it,  &c.,  &c.  It  is  the  innocence  of  his 
character,  the  purity  and  sublimity  of  his  moral  precepts,  the 
eloquence  of  his  inculcations,  the  beauty  of  the  apologues  in 
which  he  conveys  them,  that  I  so  much  admire  ;  sometimes,  in- 
deed, needing  indulgence  to  eastern  hyperbolism.  My  eulogies, 
too,  may  be  founded  on  a  postulate  which  all  may  not  be  ready 
to  grant.  Among  the  sayings  and  discourses  imputed  to  him  by 
his  biographers,  I  find  many  passages  of  fine  imagination,  correct 
morality,  and  of  the  most  lovely  benevolence  ;  and  others,  again, 
of  so  much  ignorance,  so  much  absurdity,  so  much  untruth, 
charlatanism  and  imposture,  as  to  pronounce  it  impossible  that 
such  contradictions  should  have  proceeded  from  the  same  being. 
I  separate,  therefore,  the  gold  from  the  dross  ;  restore  to  him  the 
former,  and  leave  the  latter  to  the  stupidity  of  some,  and  roguery 
of  others  of  his  disciples.  Of  this  band  of  dupes  and  impostors, 
Paul  was  the  great  Coryphasus,  and  first  corrupter  of  the  doc- 
trines of  Jesus.  These  palpable  interpolations  and  falsifications 
of  his  doctrines,  led  me  to  try  to  sift  them  apart.  I  found  the 
work  obvious  and  easy,  and  that  his  part  composed  the  most  beau- 
tiful morsel  of  morality  which  has  been  given  to  us  by  man. 
The  syllabus  is  therefore  of  his  doctrines,  not  all  of  mine.  I  read 
them  as  I  do  those  of  other  ancient  and  modern  moralists,  with 
a  mixture  of  approbation  and  dissent. 

I  rejoice,  with  you,  to  see  an  encouraging  spirit  of  internal  im- 
provement prevailing  in  the  States.  The  opinion  I  have  ever 
expressed  of  the  advantages  of  a  western  communication  through 
the  James  river,  I  still  entertain  ;  and  that  the  Cayuga  is  the 
most  promising  of  the  links  of  communication. 

The  history  of  our  University  you  know  so  far.  Seven  of  the 
ten  jiavilions  destined  for  the  professors,  and  ^bout  thirty  dormi- 
tories, will  he  completed  this  year,  and  three  other,  with  six 
hotels  for  boarding,  and  seventy  other  dormitories,  will  be  com- 
pleted' the  next  year,  and  the  whole  be  in  readiness  then  to  re- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  157 

ceive  those  who  are  to  occupy  them.  Bat  means  to  bring  these 
into  place,  and  to  set  the  machine  into  motion,  must  come  from 
the  legislature.  An  opposition,  in  the  meantime,  has  been  got 
up.  That  of  our  alma  mater,  William  and  Mary,  is  not  of  much 
weight.  She  must  descend  into  the  secondary  rank  of  academies 
of  preparation  for  the  University.  The  serious  enemies  are  the 
priests  of  the  different  religious  sects,  to  whose  spells  on  the  hu- 
man mind  its  improvement  is  ominous.  Their  pulpits  are  now 
resounding  with  denunciations  against  the  appointment  of  Doctor 
Cooper,  whom  they  charge  as  a  monotheist  in  opposition  to  their 
tritheism.  Hostile  as  these  sects  are,  in  every  other  point,  to  one 
another,  they  unite  in  maintaining  their  mystical  theogony  against 
those  who  believe  there  is  one  God  only.  The  Presbyterian 
clergy  are  loudest ;  the  most  intolerant  of  all  sects,  the  most  ty- 
rannical and  ambitious  ;  ready  at  the  word  of  the  lawgiver,  if 
such  a  word  could  be  now  obtained,  to  put  the  torch  to  the  pile, 
and  to  rekindle  in  this  virgin  hemisphere,  the  flames  in  which 
their  oracle  Calvin  consumed  the  poor  Servetus,  because  he  could 
not  find  in  his  Euclid  the  proposition  which  has  demonstrated 
that  three  are  one  and  one  is  three,  nor  subscribe  to  that  of  Cal- 
vin, that  magistrates  have  a  right  to  exterminate  all  heretics  to 
Calvinistic  Creed.  They  pant  to  re-establish,  by  law,  that  holy 
inquisition,  which  they  can  now  only  infuse  into  public  opinion. 
We  have  most  unwisely  committed  to  the  hierophants  of  our  par- 
ticular superstition,  the  direction  of  public  opinion,  that  lord  of 
the  universe.  We  have  given  them  stated  and  privileged  days 
to  collect  and  catechise  us,  opportunities  of  delivering  their  ora- 
cles to  the  people  in  mass,  and  of  moulding  their  minds  as  wax 
in  the  hollow  of  their  hands.  But  in  despite  of  their  fulmina- 
tions  against  endeavors  to  enlighten  the  general  mind,  to  improve 
the  reason  of  the  people,  and  encourage  them  in  the  use  of  it,  the 
liberality  of  this  State  will  support  this  institution,  and  give  fair 
play  to  the  cultivation  of  reason.  Can  you  ever  find  a  more 
eligible  occasion  of  visiting  once  more  your  native  country,  than 
that  of  accompanying  Mr.  Correa,  and  of  seeing  with  him  this 
beautiful  and  hopeful  institution  in  ovo  ? 


158  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

Although  I  had  laid  down  as  a  law  to  myself,  never  to  write 
talk,  or  even  think  of  politics,  to  know  nothing  of  public  affairs^ 
and  therefore  had  ceased  to  read  newspapers,  yet  the  Missouri 
question  aroused  and  iiiled  me  Avith  alarm.  The  old  schism  of 
federal  and  republican  threatened  nothing,  because  it  existed  in 
every  State,  and  united  them  together  by  the  fraternism  of 
party.  But  the  coincidence  of  a  marked  principle,  moral  and 
political,  with  a  geographical  line,  once  conceived,  I  feared  would 
never  more  be  obliterated  from  the  mind ;  that  it  would  be  re- 
curring on  every  occasion  and  renewing  irritations,  until  it  would 
kindle  such  mutual  and  mortal  hatred,  as  to  render  separation 
preferable  to  eternal  discord.  I  have  been  among  the  most  san- 
guine in  believing  that  our  Union  would  be  of  long  duration.  I 
now  doubt  it  mucM,  and  see  the  event  at  no  great  distance, 
and  the  direct  consequence  of  this  question ;  not  by  the  line 
which  has  been  so  confidently  counted  on ;  the  laws  of  nature 
control  this ;  but  by  the  Potomac,  Ohio  and  Missouri,  or  more 
probably,  the  Mississippi  upwards  to  our  northern  boundary.  My 
only  comfort  and  confidence  is,  that  I  shall  not  live  to  see  this ; 
and  I  envy  not  the  present  generation  the  glory  of  throwing 
away  the  fruits  of  their  fathers'  sacrifices  of  life  and  fortune,  and 
of  rendering  desperate  the  experiment  which  was  to  decide  ulti- 
mately whether  man  is  capable  of  self-government  ?  This  trea- 
son against  human  hope,  will  signalize  their  epoch  in  future  his- 
tory, as  the  counterpart  of  the  medal  of  their  predecessors. 

You  kindly  inquire  after  my  health.  There  is  nothing  in  it 
immediately  threatening,  but  swelled  legs,  which  are  kept  down 
mechanically,  by  bandages  from  the  toe  to  the  knee.  These  I 
have  worn  for  six  months.  But  the  tendency  to  turgidity  may 
proceed  from  debility  alone.  I  can  walk  the  round  of  my  gar- 
den ;  not  more.  But  I  ride  six  or  eight  miles  a  day  without 
fatigue.  I  shall .  set  out  for  Poplar  Forest  within  three  or  four 
days ;  a  journey  from  which  my  physician  augurs  much  good. 

I  salute  you  with  constant  and  affectionate  friendship  and  re- 
spect. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  ■  159 


TO    JOHN    HOLMES. 

MosTiCELLo,  April  22,  1S20. 

I  thank  you,  dear  Sir,  for  the  copy  you  have  been  so  kind  as 
to  send  me  of  the  letter  to  your  constituents  on  the  Missouri 
question.  It  is  a  perfect  justification  to  them.  I  had  for  a  long 
time  ceased  to  read  newspapers,  or  pay  any  attention  to  public 
affairs,  confident  they  were  in  good  hands,  and  content  to  be  a 
passenger  in  our  bark  to  the  shore  from  which  I  am  not  distant. 
But  this  momentous  question,  like  a  fire  bell  in  the  night, 
awakened  and  filled  me  with  terror.  I  considered  it  at  once  as 
the  knell  of  the  Union.  It  is  hushed,  indeed,  for  the  moment. 
But  this  is  a  reprieve  only,  not  a  final  sentence.  A  geographical 
line,  coinciding  with  a  marked  principle,  moral  and  political, 
once  conceived  and  held  up  to  the  angry  passions  of  men,  will 
never  be  obliterated ;  and  every  new  irritation  will  mark  it  deep- 
er and  deeper.  /I  can  say,  with  conscious  truth,  that  there  is  not 
a  man  on  earth  who  would  sacrifice  more  than  I  would  to  relieve 
us  from  this  heavy  reproach,  in  any  practicable  way.  The  ces- 
sion of  that  kind  of  property,  for  so  it  is  misnamed,  is  a  bagatelle 
which  would  not  cost  me  a  second  thought,  if,  in  that  way,  a 
general  emancipation  and  expatriation  could  be  effected ;  and 
gradually,  and  with  due  sacrifices,  I  think  it  might  be.  But  as 
it  is,  we  have  the  wolf  by  the  ears,  and  we  can  neither  hold 
him,  nor  safely  let  him  go.  Justice  is  in  one  scale,  and  self-pres- 
ervation in  the  other.  Of  one  thing  I  am  certain,  that  as  the 
passage  of  slaves  from  one  State  to  another,  would  not  make  a 
slave  of  a  single  human  being  who  would  not  be  so  without  it, 
so  their  diffusion  over  a  greater  surface  would  make  them  indi- 
vidually happier,  and  proportionally  facilitate  the  accomplish- 
ment of  their  emancipation,  by  dividing  the  burthen  on  a  greater 
number  of  coadjutors.  An  abstinence  too,  from  this  act  of  pow- 
er, would  remove  the  jealousy  excited  by  the  undertaking  of 
Congress  to  regulate  the  condition  of  the  different  descriptions 
of  men  composing  a  St^te.  This  certainly  is  the  exclusive 
right  of  every  State,  which  nothing  in  the  constitution  has  taken 


160  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

from  them  and  given  to  the  General  Government.  Could  Con- 
gress, for  example,  say,  that  the  non-freemen  of  Connecticut 
shall  be  freemen,  or  that  they  shall  not  emigrate  into  any  other 
State  ? 

I  regret  that  I  am  now  to  die  in  the  belief,  that  the  useless 
sacrifice  of  themselves  by  the  generation  of  1776,  to  acquire  self- 
government  and  happiness  to  their  country,  is  to  be  thrown  away 
by  the  unwise  and  unworthy  passions  of  their  sons,  and  that  my 
only  consolation  is  to  be,  that  I  live  not  to  weep  over  it.  If  they 
would  but  dispassionately  weigh  the  blessings  they  will  throw 
away,  against  an  abstract  principle  more  likely  to  be  eflected  by 
union  than  by  scission,  they  would  pause  befoje  they  would  per- 
petrate this  act  of  suicide  on  themselves,  and  of.  treason  against 
the  hopes  of  the  world.  To  yourself,  as  the  faithful  advocate  of 
the  Union,  I  tender  the  offering  of  my  high  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    THE    PRESIDENT    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES. 

Mo.NTicKLLO,  May  14,  1820. 

Deak  Sir, — Your  favor  of  the  3d  is  received,  and  always  with 
welcome.  These  texts  of  truth  relieve  me  from  the  floating 
falsehoods  of  the  public  papers.  I  confess  to  yoQ  I  am  not  sorry 
for  the  non-ratification  of  the  Spanish  treaty.  Our  assent  to  it 
has  proved  our  desire  to  be  on  friendly  terms  with  Spain  ;  their 
dissent,  the  imbecility  and  malignity  of  their  government  towards 
us,  have  placed  them  in  the  wrong  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  and 
that  is  well ;  but  to  us  the  province  of  Techas  will  be  the  richest 
State  of  our  Union,  without  any  exception.  Its  southern  part 
will  make  more  sugar  than  we  can  consume,  and  the  Red  river, 
on  its  north,  is  the  most  luxuriant  country  on  earth.  Florida, 
moreover,  is  ours.  Every  nation  in  Europe  considers  it  such  a 
right.  We  need  not  care  for  its  occupation  in  time  of  peace,  and, 
in  war,  the  first  cannon  makes  it  ours  without  offence  to  anybody. 
The  friendly  advisements,  too,  of  Russia  and  France,  as  well  as 
the  change  of  government  in  Spain,  now  ensured,  require  a  fur- 


COKEESPONDENOE.  161 

ther  and  respectful  forbearance.  While  their  request  will  rebut 
the  plea  of  prescriptive  possession,  it  will  give  us  a  right  to  iheir 
approbation  when  taken  in  the  maturity  of  circumstances.  I 
really  think,  too,  that  neither  the  state  of  our  finances,  the  con- 
dition of  our  country,  nor  the  public  opinion,  urges  us  to  precipi- 
tation into  war.  The  treaty  has  had  the  valuable  effect  of 
strengthening  our  title  to  the  Techas,  because  the  cession  of  the 
Floridas  in  exchange  for  Techas  imports  an  acknowledgment 
of  our  right  to  it.  This  province  moreover,  the  Floridas  and 
possibly  Cuba,  will  join  us  on  the  acknowledgment  of  their  inde- 
pendence, a  measure  to  which  thoir  new  governiifient  will  proba- 
bly accede  voluntarily.  But  why  should  I  be  saying  ail  this  to 
you,  whose  mind  all  the  circumstances  of  this  affair  have  had 
possession  for  years  ?  I  shall  rejoice  to  see  you  here  ;  and  were 
I  to  live  to  see  you  here  finally,  it  would  be  a  day  of  jubilee. 
But  our  days  are  all  numbered,  and  mine  are  not  many.  God 
bless  you  and  preserve  you  micchos  anos 


TO    GENERAL    TAYLOR. 

MoNTiCELLO,  May  16,  1820. 

Dear  Sir, — We  regretted  much  your  absence  at  the  late  meet- 
ing of  the  Board  of  Visitors,  but  did  not  doubt  it  was  occasioned 
by  uncontrollable  circumstances.  As  the  matters  which  came  be- 
fore us  were  of  great  importance  to  the  institution,  I  think  it  a 
duty  to  inform  you  of  them. 

You  know  the  sanction  of  the  legislature  to  our  borrowing 
$60,000  on  the  pledge  of  our  annuity  of  $15,000.  The  Litera- 
ry Board  offered  us  |40,000  on  that  pledge,  to  be  repaid  at  five 
instalments,  commencing  at  the  end  of  the  third  year  from  the 
date  of  the  loan,  and  interest  to  be  regularly  paid  in  the  mean- 
time. We  endeavored  to  obtain  permission  to  draw  for  only 
|15,000  at  first,  and  for  |3,000  monthly  afterwards,  to  avoid  the 
payment  of  dead  interest.  This  they  declined,  as  bound  them- 
selves to  keep  the  whole  of  their  capital  always  in  a  course  of 

VOL.  VII.  11 


162  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

fructification.  We  then  requested  a  postponement  of  the  iistal 
ments  to  the  fourth  instead  of  the  third  year,  with  an  additional 
loan  of  the  further  sum  of  $20,000,  authorized  by  the  law.  To  the 
postponement  they  acceded,  and  we  are  assured  they  will  to  the 
further  loan.  To  explain  to  them  the  urgency  of  this  additional 
year's  postponement,  a  paper  was  laid  before  them  of  which  I 
enclose  you  a  copy,  and  on  which  you  are  now  acting.  Should 
the  legislature  not  help  us  to  the  093,600  there  noted,  the  result 
will  be  that  at  the  end  of  the  next  year  all  the  buildings  will  be 
completed,  (the  library  excepted,)  and  will  then  remain  unoccu- 
pied five  years  longer,  until  our  funds  shall  be  free  for  the  en- 
gagements of  professors.  Should  they,  on  the  other  hand,  give 
this  aid,  our  funds  will  be  free,  at  the  beginning  of  the  next  year, 
and  will  enable  us  to  take  measures  for  procuring  professors  in 
the  course  of  that  summer,  and  to  open  the  University.  We 
were  all  of  opinion  that  we  ought  to  complete  the  buildings  for 
the  ten  professors  contemplated,  as  well  as  accommodations  for 
the  students,  before  opening  the  institution;  for  were  we  to  stop 
at  any  point  short  of  the  full  establishment,  and  open  partially, 
as  our  funds  would  thenceforward  be  absorbed  by  the  professors' 
salaries,  we  should  never  be  able  to  advance  a  step  further,  nor 
to  cover  the  whole  field  of  science  contemplated  by  the  law,  and 
made  the  object  of  our  care  and  duty.  We  thought  it  better, 
therefore,  to  risk  a  delay  of  eight  years  for  a  perfect  establish- 
ment, than  to  begin  earlier  and  go  on  forever  with  a  defective 
one ;  and  we  suppose  it  impossible  that  either  the  legislature,  or 
their  constituents,  should  not  consider  an  immediate  commence- 
ment as  worth  the  sum  necessary  to  procure  it.  You  will  ob- 
serve that  in  the  estimate  enclosed,  no  account  is  taken  of  our 
subscription  monies.  They  are,  in  fact,  too  uncertain  in  their 
collection  to  found  any  necessary  contracts ;  and  we  thought  it 
better  therefore  to  reserve  them  as  a  contingent  fund,  and  a  re- 
source to  cover  miscalculations  and  accidents. 

Another  subject  on  this,  as  on  former  occasions,  gave  us  em- 
barrassment. You  may  have  heard  of  the  hue  and  cry  raised 
from  the  different  pulpits  on  our  appointment  of  Dr.  Cooper, 


COEEESPONDENCE.  163 

whom  they  charge  with  Unitarianism  as  boldly  as  if  they  knew 
the  fact,  and  as  presumptuously  as  if  it  were  a  crime,  and  one 
for  which,  like  Servetus,  he  should  be  burned ;  and  perhaps  yen 
may  have  seen  the  particular  attack  made  on  him  in  the  Evan- 
gelical magazine.  For  myself  I  was  not  disposed  to  regard  the 
denunciations  of  these  satellites  of  religious  inquisition  ;  but  our 
colleagues,  better  judges  of  popular  feeling,  thought  that  they 
were  not  to  be  altogether  neglected ;  and  that  it  might  be  better 
to  relieve  Dr.  Cooper,  ourselves  and  the  institution  from  this 
crusade.  I  had  received  a  letter  from  him  expressing  his  uneasi- 
ness, not  only  for  himself,  but  lest  this  persecution  should  become 
embarrassing  to  the  visitors,  and  injurious  to  the  institution ;  with 
an  offer  to  resign,  if  we  had  the  same  apprehensions.  The  Vis- 
itors, therefore,  desired  the  committee  of  Superintendence  to 
place  him  at  freedom  on  this  subject,  and  to  arrange  with  him 
a  suitable  indemnification.  I  wrote  accordingly  in  answer  to 
his,  and  a  meeting  of  trustees  of  the  college  at  Columbia  hap- 
pening to  take  place  soon  after  his  receipt  of  my  letter,  they 
resolved  unanimously  that  it  should  be  proposed  to,  and  urged  on 
then-  legislature,  to  establish  a  professorship  of  Geology  and  Min- 
eralogy, or  a  professorship  of  law,  with  a  salary  of  f  1,000  a  year 
to  be  given  him,  in  addition  to  that  of  chemistry,  which  is 
$2,000  a  year,  and  to  purchase  his  collection  of  minerals ;  and 
they  have  no  doubt  of  the  legislature's  compliance.  On  the  sub- 
ject of  indemnification,  he  is  contented  with  the  balance  of  the 
f  1,500  we  had  before  agreed  to  give  him,  and  which  he  says 
will  not  more  than  cover  his  actual  losses  of  time  and  expense ; 
he  adds,  "  it  is  right  I  should  acknowledge  the  liberality  of  your 
board  with  thanks.  I  regret  the  storm  that  has  been  raised  on 
my  account ;  for  it  has  separated  me  from  many  fond  hopes  and 
wishes.  Whatever  my  religious  creed  may  be,  and  perhaps  I  do 
not  exactly  know  it  myself,  it  is  pleasure  to  reflect  that  my  con- 
duct has  not  brought,  and  is  not  likely  to  bring,  discredit  to  my 
friends.  Wherever  I  have  been,  it  has  been  my  good  fortune  to 
meet  with,  or  to  make  ardent  and  affectionate  friends.  I  feci 
persuaded  I  should  have  met  with  the  same  lot  in  Yirginia  had  it 


164  JEFFEESON'S   WOEKS. 

been  my  chance  to  have  settled  there,  as  I  had  hoped  and  ex- 
pected, for  I  think  my  course  of  conduct  is  sufficiently  habitual 
to  count  on  its  effects." 

I  do  sincerely  lament  that  untoward  circumstances  have  brought 
on  us  the  irreparable  loss  of  this  professor,  whom  I  have  looked 
to  as  the  corner-stone  of  our  edifice.  I  know  no  one  who  could 
have  aided  us  so  much  in  forming  the  future  regulations  for  our 
infant  institution ;  and  although  we  may  perhaps  obtain  from 
Europe  equivalents  in  science,  they  can  never  replace  the  ad- 
vantages of  his  experience,  his  knowledge  of  the  character,  habits 
and  manners  of  our  country,  his  identification  with  its  senti- 
ments and  principles,  and  high  reputation  he  has  obtained  in  it 
generally. 

In  the  hope  of  meeting  you  at  our  fall  visitation,  and  that  you 
will  do  me  the  favor  of  making  this  your  head  quarters,  and  of 
coming  the  day  before,  at  least,  that  we  may  prepare  our  busi- 
ness at  ease,  I  tender  you  the  assurance  of  my  great  esteem  and 
respect. 


TO    WILLrAM    SHORT. 

MoNTiOELLO,  August  4,  182C. 

Dear  Sir, — I  owe  you  a  letter  for  your  favor  of  June  the 
29th,  which  was  received  in  due  time  ;  and  there  being  no  sub- 
ject of  the  day,  of  particular  interest,  I  will  make  this  a  supple- 
ment to  mine  of  April  the  13th.  My  aim  in  that  was,  to  justify 
the  character  of  Jesus  against  the  fictions  of  his  pseudo-followers, 
which  have  exposed  him  to  the  inference  of  being  an  impostor. 
For  if  we  could  believe  that  he  really  countenanced  the  follies, 
the  falsehoods,  and  the  charlatanisms  which  his  biographers  fa- 
ther on  him,  and  admit  the  misconstructions,  interpolations,  and 
theorizations  of  the  fathers  of  the  early,  and  fanatics  of  the  latter 
ages,  the  conclusion  would  be  irresistible  by  every  sound  mind, 
that  he  was  an  impostor.  I  give  no  credit  to  their  falsifications 
of  his  actions  and  doctrines,  and  to  rescue  his  character,  the  pos- 
ulate  in  my  letter  asked  only  what  is  granted  in  reading  every 


CORRESPONDENCE.  Ig5 

other  historian.  When  Livy  and  Siculus,  for  example,  tell  us 
things  which  coincide  with  our  experience  of  the  order  of  na- 
ture, we  credit  them  on  their  word,  and  place  their  narrations 
among  the  records  of  credible  history.  But  when  they  tell  us 
of  calves  speaking,  of  statues  sweating  blood,  and  other  things 
against  the  course  of  nature,  we  reject  these  as  fables  not  belong- 
ing to  history.  In  like  manner,  when  an  historian,  speaking  of 
a  character  well  known  and  established  on  satisfactory  testimony, 
imputes  to  it  things  incompatible  with  that  character,  we  reject 
them  without  hesitation,  and  assent  to  that  only  of  which  we 
have  better  evidence.  Had  Plutarch  informed  us  that  Cassar  and 
Cicero  passed  their  whole  lives  in  religious  exercises,  and  absti- 
nence from  the  affairs  of  the  world,  we  should  reject  what  was 
so  inconsistent  with  their  established  characters,  still  crediting 
what  he  relates  in  conformity  with  our  ideas  of  them.  So  again, 
the  superlative  wisdom  of  Socrates  is  testified  by  all  antiquity, 
and  placed  on  ground  not  to  be  questioned.  When,  therefore, 
Plato  puts  into  his  mouth  such  paralogisms,  such  quibbles  on 
words,  and  sophisms  as  a  school  boy  would  be  ashamed  of,  we 
conclude  they  were  the  whimsies  of  Plato's  own  foggy  brain,  and 
acquit  Socrates  of  puerilities  so  unlike  his  character.  (Speaking 
of  Plato,  I  will  add,  that  no  writer,  ancient  or  modern,  has  be- 
wildered the  world  with  more  ignus  fatui,  than  this  renowned 
philosopher,  in  Ethics,  in  Politics,  and  Physics.  In  the  latter,  to 
specify  a  single  example,  compare  his  views  of  the  animal  econ- 
omy, in  his  Timaeus,  with  those  of  Mrs.  Bryan  in  her  Conversa- 
tions on  Chemistry,  and  weigh  the  science  of  the  canonized  phi- 
losopher against  the  good  sense  of  the  unassuming  lady.  But 
Plato's  visions  have  furnished  a  basis  for  endless  systems  of  mys- 
tical theology,  and  he  is  therefore  all  but  adopted  as  a  Christian 
saint.  It  is  surely  time  for  men  to  think  for  themselves,  and  to 
throw  off  the  authority  of  names  so  artificially  magnified.  But 
to  return  from  this  parenthesis.)  I  say,  that  this  free  exercise  of 
reason  is  all  }  ask  for  the  vindication  of  the  character  of  Jesus. 
We  find  in  the  writings  of  his  biographers  matter  of  two  distinct 
descriptions.    First,  a  groundwork  of  vulgar  ignorance,  of  things 


166  JEFFERSOiT'S   WOEKS. 

impossible,  of  superstitions,  fanaticisms,  and  fabrications.  Intep^ 
mixed  with  these,  again,  are  subUme  ideas  of  the  Supreme  Being, 
aphorisms,  and  precepts  of  the  purest  morahty  and  benevolence, 
sanctioned  by  a  life  of  humility,  innocence  and  simplicity  of 
manners,  neglect  of  riches,  absence  of  worldly  ambition  and 
honors,  with  an  eloquence  and  persuasiveness  which  have  not 
been  surpassed.  These  could  not  be  inventions  of  the  grovelling 
authors  who  relate  them.  They  are  far  beyond  the  powers  of 
their  feeble  minds.  They  show  that  there  was  a  character,  the 
subject  of  their  history,  whose  splendid  conceptions  were  above 
all  suspicion  of  being  interpolations  from  their  hands.  Can  we 
be  at  a  loss  in  separating  such  materials,  and  ascribing  each  to 
its  genuine  author  ?  The  difference  is  obvious  to  the  eye  and  to 
the  understanding,  and  we  may  read  as  we  ru;i  to  each  his  part ; 
and  I  will  venture  to  affirm,  that  he  who,  as  I  have  done,  will 
undertake  to  winnow  this  grain  from  the  chaff,  will  find  it 
not  to  require  a  moment's  consideration.  The  parts  fall  asunder 
of  themselves,  as  would  those  of  an  image  of  metal  and  clay. 

There  are,  I  acknowledge,  passages  not  free  from  objection, 
which  we  may,  with  probability,  ascribe  to  Jesus  himself;  but 
claiming  indulgence  from  the  circumstances  under  which  he 
acted.  His  object  was  the  reformation  of  some  articles  in  the 
religion  of  the  Jews,  as  taught  by  Moses.  That  sect  had  pre- 
sented for  the  object  of  their  worship,  a  being  of  terrific  charac- 
ter, cruel,  vindictive,  capricious,  and  unjust.  Jesus,  taking  for 
his  type  the  best  qualities  of  the  human  head  and  heart,  wisdom, 
justice,  goodness,  and  adding  to  them  power,  ascribed  all  of 
these,  but  in  infinite  perfection,  to  the  Supreme  Being,  and 
formed  him  really  worthy  of  their  adoration.  Moses  had  either 
not  believed  in  a  future  state  of  existence,  or  had  not  thought  it 
essential  to  be  explicitly  taught  to  his  people.  Jesus  inculcated 
that  doctrine  with  emphasis  and  precision.  Moses  had  bound 
the  Jews  to  many  idle  ceremonies,  mummeries,  and  observances, 
of  no  effect  towards  producing  the  social  utilities  which  consti- 
tute the  essence  of  virtue  ;  Jesus  exposed  their  futility  and  insig- 
nificance.    The  one  instilled  into  his  people  the  most  anti-social 


CORRESPONDENCE.  167 

spi-iit  toward  other  nations  ;  the  other  preached  philanthroi)y  and 
universal  charity  and  benevolence.  The  office  of  reformer  of 
the  superstitions  of  a  nation,  is  ever  dangerous.  Jesus  had  to 
walk  on  the  perilous  confines  of  reason  and  religion  ;  and  a  step 
to  right  or  left  might  place  him  within  the  grasp  of  the  priests 
of  the  superstition,  a  blood-thirsty  race,  as  cruel  and  remorse- 
less as  the  being  whom  they  represented  as  the  family  God  of 
Abraham,  of  Isaac  and  of  Jacob,  and  the  local  God  of  Israel. 
They  were  constantly  laying  snares,  too,  to  entangle  him  in  the 
web  of  the  law.  He  was  justifiable,  therefore,  in  avoiding 
these  by  evasions,  by  sophisms,  by  misconstructions  and  misap- 
plications of  scraps  of  the  prophets,  and  in  defending  himself 
with  these  their  own  weapons,  as  sufficient,  ad  homines,  at  least. 
That  Jesus  did  not  mean  to  impose  himself  on  mankind  as  the 
son  of  God,  physically  speaking,  I  have  been  convinced  by  the 
writings  of  men  more  learned  than  myself  in  that  lore.  But  that 
he  might  conscientiously  believe  himself  inspired  from  above, 
is  very  possible.  The  whole  religion  of  the  Jew,  inculcated  on 
him  from  his  infancy,  was  founded  in  the  belief  of  divine  mspir- 
ation.  The  fumes  of  the  most  disorded  imaginations  were  re- 
corded in  then-  religious  code,  as  special  communications  of  the 
Deity  ;  and  as  it  could  not  but  happen  that,  in  the  com-se  of  ages, 
events  would  now  and  then  turn  up  to  which  some  of  these 
vague  rhapsodies  might  be  accommodated  by  the  aid  of  allegor- 
ies, figures,  types,  and  other  tricks  upon  words,  they  have  not 
only  preserved  their  credit  with  the  Jews  of  all  subsequent  times, 
but  are  the  foundation  of  much  of  the  religions  of  those  who 
have  schismatised  from  them.  Elevated  by  the  enthusiasm  of 
a  warm  and  pure  heart,  conscious  of  the  high  strains  of  an  elo- 
quence which  had  not  been  taught  him,  he  might  readily  mis- 
take the  coruscations  of  his  own  fine  genius  for  inspirations  of 
an  higher  order.  This  belief  carried,  therefore,  no  more  personal 
imputation,  than  the  belief  of  Socrates,  that  himself  was  under 
the  care  and  admonitions  of  a  guardian  Daemon.  And  how 
many  of  our  wisest  men  still  believe  in  the  reaUty  of  these  in- 
spirations, while  ^rfectly  sane  on  all  other  subjects.     Excusing, 


168  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

therefore,  on  these  considerations,  those  passages  in  the  gos- 
pels which  seem  to  bear  marks  of  weakness  in  Jesus,  ascribing 
to  him  what  alone  is  consistent  with  the  great  and  pure  charac- 
ter of  which  the  same  writings  furnish  proofs,  and  to  their  proper 
authors  their  own  trivialities  and  imbecilities,  I  think  myself 
authorized  to  conclude  the  purity  and  distinction  of  his  charac- 
ter, in  opposition  to  the  impostures  which  those  authors  would 
fix  upon  him  ;  and  that  the  postulate  of  my  former  letter  is  no 
more  than  is  granted  in  all  other  historical  works. 

Mr.  Correa  is  here,  on  his  farewell  visit  to  us.  He  has  been 
much  pleased  with  the  plan  and  progress  of  our  University,  and 
has  given  some  valuable  hints  to  its  botanical  branch.  He  goes 
to  do,  I  hope,  much  good  in  hi»  new  country ;  the  public  in- 
struction there,  as  I  understand,  being  within  the  department 
destined  for  him.  He  is  not  without  dissatisfaction,  and  reason- 
able dissatisfaction  too,  with  the  piracies  of  Baltimore ;  but  his 
justice  and  friendly  dispositions  will,  I  am  sure,  distinguish  be- 
tween the  iniquities  of  a  few  plunderers,  and  the  sound  principles 
of  our  country  at  large,  and  of  our  government  especially.  From 
many  conversations  with  him,  I  hope  he  sees,  and  will  promote  in 
his  new  situation,  the  advantages  of  a  cordial  fraternization  among 
all  the  American  nations,  and  the  importance  of  their  coalesc- 
ing in  an  American  system  of  policy,  totally  independent  of 
and  unconnected  with  that  of  Europe.  The  day  is  not  distant, 
when  we  may  formally  require  a  meridian  of  partition  through 
the  ocean  which  separates  the  two  hemispheres,  on  the  hither 
side  of  which  no  European  gun  shall  ever  be  heard,  nor  an 
American  on  the  other  ;  and  when,  during  the  rage  of  the  eternal 
wars  of  Europe,  the  lion  and  the  lamb,  within  our  regions, 
shall  lie  down  together  in  peace.  The  excess  of  population  in 
Europe,  and  want  of  room,  render  war,  in  their  opinion,  neces- 
sary to  keep  down  that  excess  of  numbers.  Here,  room  is  abun- 
dant, population  scanty,  and  peace  the  necessary  means  for  pro- 
ducing men,  to  whom  the  redundant  soil  is  offering  the  means 
of  life  and  happiness.  The  principles  of  society  there  and  here, 
thenj  are  radically  different,  and  I  hope  no  American  patriot  will 


CORRESPONDENCE.  169 

ever  lose  sight  of  the  essential  policy  of  interdicting  in  the  seas 
and  territories  of  both  Americas,  the  ferocious  and  sanguinary 
contests  of  Europe.  I  wish  to  see  this  coalition  begun,.  I  am 
earnest  for  an  agreement  with  the  maritime  powers  of  Europe, 
assigning  them  the  task  of  keeping  down  the  piracies  of  their 
seas  and  the  cannibalisms  of  the  African  coasts,  and  to  us,  the 
suppression  of  the  same  enormities  within  our  seas  ;  and  for  this 
purpose,  I  should  rejoice  to  see  the  fleets  of  Brazil  and  the  United 
States  riding  together  as  brethren  of  the  same  family,  and  pur- 
suing the  same  object.  And  indeed  it  would  be  of  happy  augury 
to  begin  at  once  this  concert  of  action  here,  on  the  invitation  of 
either  to  the  other  government,  while  the  way  might  be  ^jrepar- 
ing  for  withdrawing  our  cruisers  from  Europe,  and  preventing 
naval  collisions  there  which  daily  endanger  our  peace. 

**         **         ***         **# 
Accept  assurances  of  the  sincerity  of  my  friendship  and  re- 
spect for  you. 


TO    DOCTOR    COOPEB. 

MoNTiCELLO,  August  14,  1820. 

Deak  Sib, — Yours  of  the  24th  ult.  was  received  in  due  time, 
and  I  shall  rejoice  indeed  if  Mr.  Elliot  and  Mr.  Nulty  are  joined 
to  you  in  the  institution  at  Columbia,  which  now  becomes  of 
immediate  interest  to  me.  Mr.  Stack  has  given  notice  to  his 
first  class  that  he  shall  dismiss  them  on  the  10th  of  the  next 
month,  and  his  mathematical  assistant  also  at  the  same  time, 
being  determined  to  take  only  small  boys  in  future.  My  grand- 
son, Eppes,  is  of  the  first  class ;  and  I  have  proposed  to  his  fa- 
ther to  send  him  to  Columbia,  rather  than  anywhere  northwardly. 
I  am  obliged,  therefore,  to  ask  of  you  by  what  day  he  ought  to 
be  there,  so  as  to  be  at  the  commencement  of  what  they  call  a 
session,  and  to  be  so  good  as  to  do  this  by  the  first  mail,  as  I 
shall  set  out  to  Bedford  within  about  a  fortnight.  He  is  so  far  ad- 
vanced in  Greek  and  Latin  that  he  will  be  able  to  pursue  them  by 
himself  hereafter ;   and  being  between  eighteen  and  nineteen 


170  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

years  of  age  he  has  no  time  to  lose.  I  propose  that  he  shall  com- 
mence  immediately  with  the  mathematics  and  natural  philosophy 
to  be  followed  by  astronomy,  chemistry,  mineralogy,  botany, 
natural  history.  It  would  be  time  lost  for  him  to  attend  profess- 
ors of  ethics,  metaphysics,  logic,  &c.  The  first  of  these  may 
be  as  well  acquired  in  the  closet  as  from  living  lectures ;  and 
supposing  the  two  last  to  mean  the  science  of  mind,  the  simple 
reading  of  Locke,  Tracy,  and  Stewart,  will  give  him  as  much 
in  that  branch  as  is  real  science.  A  relation  of  his  (Mr.  Ba- 
ker)  and  classmate  will  go  with  him. 

I  hope  and  believe  you  are  mistaken  in  supposing  the  reign  of 
fanaticism  to  be  on  the  advance.     I  think  it  certainly  declining. 
It  was  first  excited  artificially  by  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  as  an 
engine  of  opposition  to  Bonaparte  and  to  France.     It  rose  to  a 
great  height  there,  and  became  indeed  a  powerful  engine  of 
loyalism,  and  of  support  to  their  governments.     But  that  loyal- 
ism  is  giving  way  to  very  different  dispositions,  and  its  prompter 
fanaticism,  is  vanishing  with  it.     In  the  meantime  it  had  been 
wafted  across  the  Atlantic,  and  chiefly  from  England,  with  their 
other  fashions,  but  it  is  here  also  on  the  wane.    The  ambitious  sect 
of  Presbyterians  indeed,  the   Loyalists   of  our   country,  spare 
no  pains  to  keep  it  up.     But  their  views  of  ascendency  over 
all  other  sects  in  the  United  States  seem  to  excite  alarm  in  all, 
and  to  unite  them  as  against  a  common  and  threatening  enemy. 
And  although  the  Unitarianism  they  impute  to  you  is  heterodoxy 
with  all  of  them,  I  suspect  the  other  sects  will  admit  it  to  their 
alliance  in  order  to  strengthen  the  phalanx  of  opposition  against 
the  enterprises  of  their  more  aspiring  antagonists.      Although 
spiritualism  is  most  prevalent  with  all  these  sects,  yet  with  none 
of  them,  I  presume,  is  materialism  declared  heretical.     Mr.  Locke, 
on  whose  authority  they  often  plume  themselves,  openly  main- 
tained the  materialism  of  the  soul ;  and  charged  with  blasphemy 
those  who  denied  that  it  was  in  the  power  of  an  Almighty  Crea- 
tor to  endow  with  the  faculty  of  thought  any  composition  of 
matter  he  might  think  fit.     The  fathers  of  the  church  of  the 
three  first  centuries  generally,  if  not  universally,  were  material- 


COERESPONDENOE.  171 

ists,  extending  it  even  to  the  Creator  himself ;  nor  indeed  do  I 
know  exactly  *  in  what  age  of  the  christian  church  the  heresy 
of  spiritualism  was  introduced.  Huet,  in  his  commentai'ies  on 
Origen,t  says,  "  Deus  igitur,  cui  anima  similis  est,  juxta  Origenem, 
reapse  corporalis  est,  sed  graviorum  tantum  ratione  corporum  in- 
corporeus."J  St.  Macari,§  as  speaking  of  angels  says,  "  quam 
vis  enim  suhtilia  sint,  tamen  in  substantia,  forma,  et  figura,  secun- 
dum tenuitatem  naturae  eorum  corpora  sunt  tenuia,  quemadmodum 
et  hoc  corpus  in  substantia  sua  crassum  et  solidum  est."||   St.  Justin 

martyr  says  expressly  "to  6eiov  <fOfiev  eivai  aauuarov,  ovK  Se  eariv  aauaarov." 

Tertullian's  words  are,  "  quid  euim  Deus  nisi  corpus  ?"  and 
again,  "  quis  autem  negabit  Deuni  esse  corpus  ?  et  si  deus  spiritus, 
spiritus  etiam  corpus  est  sui  generis,  in  sua  effigie,"  and  that  the 
soul  is  matter  he  adduces  the  following  tangible  proof :  "in  ipso 
ultimo  voluptatis  aestu,  quo  genitale  vii'us  expellitur,  nonne  ali- 
quid  de  anima  sentimus  exire  ?"![  The  holy  father  thus  assert- 
ing, and,  as  it  would  seem,  from  his  own  feelings,  that  the  sperm 
infused  into  the  female  matrix  deposits  there  the  matter  and 
germ  of  both  soul  and  body,  conjunctim,  of  the  new  foetus.  Al- 
though I  do  not  pretend  to  be  familiar  with  these  fathers,  and 
give  the  preceding  quotations  at  second  hand,  yet  I  learn  from 
authors  whom  I  respect,  that  not  only  those  I  have  named,  but 
St.  Augustin,**  St.  Basil,  Lactantius,  Tatian,  Athenagoras,  and 
others,  concurred  in  ■  the  materiality  of  the  soul.  Our  modern 
doctors  would  hardly  ventm-e  or  wish  to  condemn  theii'  fathers  as 
heretics,  the  main  pillars  of  theii-  fabric  resting  on  their  shoulders. 

In  the  consultations  of  the  visitors  of  the  university  on  the  sub- 
ject of  releasing  you  from  yom-  engagement  with  us,  although 
one  or  two  members  seemed  alarmed  at  this  cry  of  "  fire"  from 
the  Presbyterian  pulpits,  yet  the  real  ground  of  our  decision  was 
that  our  funds  were  in  fact  hypotheticated  for  five  or  six  years 
to  redeem  the  loan  we  had  reluctantly  made  ;  and  although  we 

*  I  believe  by  Athenasius  and  the  council  of  !Kicea. 

f  Ocellua  de  d'Argens,  p.  9t.  J  Enfield,  vi.  3.  §  lb.  105. 

i  Timseus,  l"?.    Enfield,  vi.  8.  T  Hist,  des  Saints,  2  c.  4  p.  212,  215. 

**  Ocellus,  90. 


172  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

hoped  and  trusted  that  the  ensuing  legislature  would  remit  the 
debt  and  liberate  our  funds,  yet  it  was  not  just,  on  this  possi- 
bility, to  stand  in  the  way  of  your  looking  out  for  a  more  certain 
provision.  The  completing  all  our  buildings  for  professors  and 
students  by  the  autumn  of  the  ensuing  year,  is  now  secured  by 
sufficient  contracts,  and  our  confidence  is  most  strong  that  nei- 
ther the  State  nor  their  legislature  will  bear  to  see  those  buildings 
shut  up  for  five  or  six  years,  when  they  have  the  money  in  hand, 
■ind  actually  appropriated  to  the  object  of  education,  which  would 
open  their  doors  at  once  for  the  reception  of  their  sons,  now 
waiting  and  calling  aloud  for  that  institution.  The  legislature 
meets  on  the  1st  Monday  of  December,  and  before  Christmas  we 
shall  know  what  are  their  intentions.  If  such  as  we  expect,  we 
shall  then  immediately  take  measures  to  engage  our  professors 
and  bring  them  into  place  the  ensuing  autumn  or  early  winter. 
My  hope  is  that  you  will  be  able  and  willing  to  keep  yourself 
uncommitted,  to  take  your  place  among  them  about  that  time  ; 
and  I  can  assure  you  there  is  not  a  voice  among  us  which  will 
not  be  cordially  given  for  it.  I  think,  too,  I  may  add,  that  if  the 
Presbyterian  opposition  should  not  die  by  that  time,  it  will  be 
directed  at  once  against  the  whole  institution,  and  not  amuse  it- 
self with  nibbling  at  a  single  object.  It  did  that  only  because 
there  was  no  other,  and  they  might  think  it  politic  to  mask  their 
designs  on  the  body  of  the  fortress,  under  the of  a  bat- 
tery against  a  single  bastion.  I  will  not  despair  then  of  the 
avail  of  your  services  in  an  establishment  which  I  contemplate 
as  the  future  bulwark  of  the  human  mind  in  this  hemisphere. 
God  bless  you  and  preserve  you  multos  annos.     - 


TO   JOHN   ADAMS. 

MoNTicELLo,  August  15,  1820. 

I  am  a  great  defaulter,  my  dear  Sir,  jn  our  correspondence, 
but  prostrate  health  rarely  permits  me  to  write;  and  when  it 
does,  matters  of  business  imperiously  press  their  claims.     I  am 


CORRESPONDENCE.  173 

getting  tetter  however,  slowly,  swelled  legs  being  now  the  only 
serious  symptom,  and  these,  I  believe,  proceed  from  extreme  de- 
bility. I  can  walk  but  little ;  but  I  ride  six  or  eight  miles  a  day 
without  fatigue ;  and  within  a  few  days,  I  shall  endeavor  to  visit 
my  other  home,  after  a  twelvemonth's  absence  from  it.  Our 
University,  four  miles  distant,  gives  me  frequent  exercise,  and 
the  oftener,  as  I  direct  its  architecture.  Its  plan  is  unique,  and 
it  is  becoming  an  object  of  curiosity  for  the  traveller.  I  have 
lately  had  an  opportunity  of  reading  a  critique  on  this  institution 
in  yom"  North  American  Rteview  of  January  last,  having  been 
not  without  anxiety  to  see  what  that  able  work  would  say  of 
us ;  and  I  was  relieved  on  finding  in  it  much  coincidence  of 
opinion,  and  even  where  criticisms  were  indulged,  I  found  they 
would  have  been  obviated  had  the  developments  of  our  plan 
been  fuller.  But  these  were  restrained  by  the  character  of  the 
paper  reviewed,  being  merely  a  report  of  outlines,  not  a  detailed 
treatise,  and  addressed  to  a  legislative  body,  not  to  a  learned 
academy.  For  example,  as  an  inducement  to  introduce  the 
Anglo-Saxon  into  our  plan,  it  was  said  that  it  would  reward 
amply  the  few  weeks  of  attention  which  alone  would  be  requisite 
for  its  attainment ;  leaving  both  term  and  degree  under  an  inde- 
finite expression,  because  I  know  that  not  much  time  is  neces- 
sary to  attain  it  to  an  useful  degree,  sufficient  to  give  such  in- 
struction in  the  etymologies  of  our  language  as  may  satisfy  or- 
dinai-y  students,  while  more  time  would  be  requisite  for  those 
who  should  propose  to  attain  a  critical  knowledge  of  it.  In  a 
letter  which  I  had  occasion  to  write  to  Mi-.  Crofts,  who  sent  you, 
I  believe,  as  well  as  myself,  a  copy  of  his  ti-eatise  on  the  English 
and  German  languages,  as  preliminary  to  an  etymological  dic- 
tionary he  meditated,  I  went  into  explanations  with  him  of  an 
easy  process  for  simplifying  the  study  of  the  Anglo-Saxon,  and 
lessening  the  terrors  and  difficulties  presented  by  its  rude  alpha- 
bet, and  unformed  orthography.  But  this  is  a  subject  beyond 
the  bounds  of  a  letter,  as  it  was  beyond  the  bounds  of  a  report 
to  the  legislatiu-e.  Mi.  Crofts  died,  I  believe,  before  any  pro- 
gress was  made  in  the  work  he  had  projected. 


174  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

The  reviewer  expresses  doubt,  rather  than  decision,  on  oiu 
placing  military  and  naval  architecture  in  the  department  of  pure 
mathematics.  Military  architecture  embraces  fortification  and 
fieldworks,  which,  with  their  bastions,  curtains,  hornworks,  re- 
doubts, (fcc,  are  based  on  a  technical  combination  of  lines  and 
angles.  These  are  adapted  to  offence  and  defence,  with  and 
against  the  effects  of  bombs,  balls,  escalades,  &c.  But  lines  and 
angles  make  the  sum  of  elementary  geometry,  a  branch  of  pure 
mathematics ;  and  the  direction  of  the  bombs,  balls,  and  other 
projectiles,  the  necessary  appendages  of  military  works,  although 
no  part  of  their  architecture,  belong  to  the  conic  sections,  a 
branch  of  transcendental  geometry.  Diderot  and  D'Alembert, 
therefore,  in  their  Arbor  scientice,  have  placed  military  archi- 
tecture in  the  department  of  elementary  geometry.  Naval  archi- 
tecture teaches  the  best  form  and  construction  of  vessels;  for 
which  best  form  it  has  recom'se  to  the  question  of  the  solid  of 
least  resistance  ;  a  problem  of  transcendental  geometry.  And  its 
appurtenant  projectiles  belong  to  the  same  branch,  as  in  the  pre- 
ceding case.  It  is  true,  that  so  far  as  respects  the  action  of  the 
water  on  the  rudder  and  oars,  and  of  the  wind  on  the  sails,  it 
may  be  placed  in  the  department  of  mechanics,  as  Diderot  and 
D'Alembert  have  done  ;  but  belonging  quite  as  much  to  geom- 
etry,, and  allied  in  its  military  character  to  military  architecture, 
it  simj)lified  our  plan  to  place  both  under  the  same  head.  These 
views  are  so  obvious,  that  I  am  sure  they  would  have  required 
but  a  second  thought,  to  reconcile  the  reviewer  to  their  location 
under  the  head  of  pure  mathematics.  For  this  word  location, 
see  Bailey,  Johnson,  Sheridan,  Walker,  «fec.  But  if  dictionaries 
are  to  be  the  arbiters  of  language,  in  which  of  them  shall  we  find 
neologism.  No  matter.  It  is  a  good  word,  well  sounding,  ob- 
vious, and  expresses  an  idea,  which  would  otherwise  require  cir- 
cumlocution. The  reviewer  was  justifiable,  therefore,  in  using 
it ;  although  he  noted  at  the  same  time,  as  unauthoritative,  cen- 
trality,  grade,  sparse  ;  all  which  have  been  long  used  in  common 
speech  and  writing.  I  am  a  friend  to  neology.  It  is  the  only 
way  to  give  to  a  language  copiousness  and  euphony.     Without 


COERESPONDENOE.  I75 

it  we  should  still  be  held  to  the  vocabulary  of  Alfred  or  of  Ul- 
philas ;  and  held  to  their  state  of  science  also  :  for  I  am  sure  they 
had  no  words  which  could  have  conveyed  the  ideas  of  oxygen, 
cotyledons,  zoophytes,  magnetism,  electricity,  hyaline,  and  thou- 
sands of  others  expressing  ideas  not  then  existing,  nor  of  possible 
communication  in  the  state  of  their  language.  What  a  language 
has  the  French  become  since  the  date  of  their  revolution,  by  the 
free  introduction  of  new  words !  The  most  copious  and  eloquent 
in  the  living  world ;  and  equal  to  the  Greek,  had  not  that  been 
regularly  modifiable  almost  ad  infinitum.  Theii'  rule  was,  that 
whenever  their  language  furnished  or  adopted  a  root,  all  its 
branches,  in  every  part  of  speech,  were  legitimated  by  giving 
them  their  appropriate  terminations.     ASeKtfo?,  adeltfrj,  aSeXq^tdwi-, 

«(5fi(j/0T);ff,    o(5fAgri.5if ,    adelrfidug,   aSsi-cpixog,   aSeXqji'Qai,   aSf).(ptyoi;.       And 

this  should  be  the  law  of  every  language.  Thus,  having  adopted 
the  ad]ective  fraternal,  it  is  a  root  which  should  legitimate  fra- 
ternity,  fraternation,  fraternisation,  fraternism,  to  fraternate, 
fraternise,  fraternally.  And  give  the  word  neologism  to  our 
language,  as  a  root,  and  it  should  give  us  its  fellow  substantives, 
neology,  neologist,  neologisation  ;  its  adjectives,  neologous,  neolo- 
gical,  neologistical ;  its  verb,  neologise  ;  and  adverb,  neologically. 
Dictionaries  are  but  the  depositories  of  words  already  legitimated 
by  usage.  Society  is  the  workshop  in  which  new  ones  are 
elaborated.  When  an  individual  uses  a  new  word,  if  ill  formed, 
it  is  rejected  in  society  ;  if  well  formed,  adopted,  and  after  due 
time,  laid  up  in  the  depository  of  dictionaries.  And  if,  in  this 
process  of  sound  neologisation,  our  trans-Atlantic  brethren  shall 
not  choose  to  accompany  us,  we  may  furnish,  after  the  lonians,  a 
second  example  of  a  colonial  dialect  improving  on  its  primitive. 
But  enough  of  criticism :  let  me  turn  to  your  puzzling  letter  of 
May  the  12th,  on  matter,  spirit,  motion,  &c.  Its  crowd  of  scep- 
ticisms kept  mo.  from  sleep.  I  read  it,  and  laid  it  down  ;  read  it, 
and  laid  it  down,  again  and  again  ;  and  to  give  rest  to  my  mind, 
I  was  obliged  to  recur  ultimately  to  my  habitual  anodyne,  "  I  feel, 
therefore  I  exist."  I  feel  bodies  which  are  not  myself:  there  are 
other  existences  then.     I  call  them  matter.     I  feel  them  chang- 


176  JEFFEKSON'S   WOKKS. 

ing  place.  This  gives  me  motion.  Where  there  is  an  absence 
of  matter,  I  call  it  void,  or  nothing,  or  immaterial  space.  On  the 
basis  of  sensation,  of  matter  and  motion,  we  may  erect  the  fabric 
of  all  the  certainties  we  can  have  or  need.  I  can  conceive  thought 
to  be  an  action  of  a  particular  organization  of  matter,  formed  for 
that  purpose  by  its  creator,  as  well  as  that  attraction  is  an  action 
of  matter,  or  magnetism,  of  loadstone.  When  he  who  denies  to 
the  Creator  the  power  of  endowing  matter  with  the  mode  of  ac- 
tion called  thinking,  shall  show  how  he  could  endow  the  sun 
with  the  mode  of  action  called  attraction,  which  reins  the  planets 
in  the  track  of  their  orbits,  or  how  an  absence  of  matter  can  have 
a  will,  and  by  that  will  put  matter  into  motion,  then  the  Materi- 
alist may  be  lawfully  required  to  explain  the  process  by  which 
matter  exercises  the  faculty  of  thinking.  When  once  we  quit 
the  basis  of  sensation,  all  is  in  the  wind.  To  talk  of  immaterial 
existences,  is  to  talk  of  nothings.  To  say  that  the  human  soul, 
angels,  God,  are  immaterial,  is  to  say,  they  are  nothings,  or  that 
there  is  no  God,  no  angels,  no  soul.  I  cannot  reason  otherwise  : 
but  I  believe  I  am  supported  in  my  creed  of  materialism  by  the 
Lockes,  the  Tracys,  and  the  Stewarts.  At  what  age*  of  the 
Christian  church  this  heresy  of  immaterialism,  or  masked  athe- 
ism, crept  in,  I  do  not  exactly  know.  But  a  heresy  it  certainly 
is.  Jesus  taught  nothing  of  it.  He  told  us,  indeed,  that  "  God 
is  a  spirit,"  but  he  has  not  defined  what  a  spirit  is,  nor  said  that 
it  is  not  matter.  And  the  ancient  fathers  generally,  of  the  three 
first  centuries,  held  it  to  be  matter,  light  and  thin  indeed,  an 
etherial  gas ;  but  still  matter.  Origen  says,  "  Deus  se  ipse  cor- 
poralis  est ;  sed  graviorum  tantum  corporum  ratione,  incorporeus." 
TertuUian,  "  quid  enim  deus  nisi  corpus  ?"  And  again,  "  quis 
negabit  deum  esse  corpus  ?  Etsi  deus  spiritus,  spiritus  etiam 
corpus  est,  sui  generis  in  sua  eifigie."     St.  Justin  Martyr,  "  ro 

•i^EiOv  cpufisy  Biviti  ugwfxuiop'  6«  ^OTt  ugbi^ajov — enetdrj  ds  rojutj  xouTS^adai 
ino    Tivog   ta  xg(xTetg&ai,  TtfiiaizSQOi'  sqi  dtu  raro   k«A8|U6»'  uvtop  agtM/Autoy." 

And  St.  Macarius,  speaking  of  angels,  says,  "  quamvis  enim  sub- 

tilia  sint,  tamen  in  substantia,  forma  et  figurS,  secundum  tenui- 

*  That  of  Athanasius  and  the  Coianoil  of  Nicsea,  anno.  324. 


OOEEESPONDENOE.  177 

tatem  naturae  eorum,  corpora  sunt  tenuia."  And  St.  Austin, 
St.  Basil,  Lactantius,  Tatian,  Athenagoras  and  others,  with  whose 
writings  I  pretend  not  a  familiarity,  are  said  by  those  who  are 
better  acquainted  with  them,  to  deliver  the  same  doctrine,  (En- 
field X.  3,  1.)  Tiurn  to  your  Ocellus  d'Argens,  97,  105,  and  to 
his  Timaeus  17,  for  these  quotations.  In  England,  these  Imma- 
terialists  might  have  been  burnt  until  the  29  Car.  2,  when  the 
writ  de  hcuretico  comhurendo  was  abolished  ;  and  here  imtil  the 
Revolution,  that  statute  not  having  extended  to  us.  All  heresies 
being  now  done  away  with  us,  these  schismatists  are  merely 
atheists,  differing  from  the  material  atheist  only  in  their  belief, 
that  "  nothing  made  something,"  and  from  the  material  deist, 
who  believes  that  matter  alone  can  operate  on  matter. 

Rejecting  all  organs  of  information,  therefore,  but  my  senses, 
I  rid  myself  of  the  pyrrhonisms  with  which  an  indulgence  in  spe- 
culations hyperphysical  and  antiphysical,  so  uselessly  occupy  and 
disquiet  the  mind.  A  single  sense  may  indeed  be  sometimes 
deceived,  but  rarely ;  and  never  all  our  senses  together,  with  their 
faculty  of  reasoning.  They  evidence  realities,  and  there  are 
enough  of  these  for  all  the  purposes  of  life,  without  plunging  into 
the  fathomless  abyss  of  dreams  and  phantasms.  I  am  satisfied, 
and  sufiiciently  occupied  with  the  things  which  are,  without  tor- 
menting or  troubling  myself  about  those  which  may  indeed  be, 
but  of  which  I  have  no  evidence.  I  am  sure  that  I  reallj''  know 
many,  many  things,  and  none  more  surely  than  that  I  love  you 
with  all  my  heart,  and  pray  for  the  continuance  of  youi-  life  until 
you  shall  be  tired  of  it  yourself. 


TO    MR.    JABVIS. 

MoNTiOELLO,  September  28,  1820. 

I  thank  you.  Sir,  for  the  copy  of  your  Republican  which  you 
have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me,  and  I  should  have  acknowl- 
edged it  sooner  but  that  I  am  just  returned  home  after  a  long 
absence.     I  have  not  yet  had  time  to  read  it  seriously,  but  in 

VOL.  VII.  12 


178  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

looking  over  it  cursorily  I  see  much  in  it  to  approve,  and  shall  be 
glad  if  it  shall  lead  our  youth  to  the  practice  of  thinking  on  such 
subjects  and  for  themselves.  That  it  will  have  this  tendency 
may  be  expected,  and  for  that  reason  I  feel  an  urgency  to  note 
what  I  deem  an  error  in  it,  the  more  requiring  notice  as  your 
opinion  is  strengthened  by  that  of  many  others.  You  seem,  in 
pages  84  and  148,  to  consider  the  judges  as  the  ultimate  arbiters 
of  all  constitutional  questions  ;  a  very  dangerous  doctrine  indeed, 
and  one  which  would  place  us  under  the  despotism  of  an  oligar- 
chy. Our  judges  are  as  honest  as  other  men,  and  not  more  so. 
They  have,  with  others,  the  same  passions  for  party,  for  power, 
and  the  privilege  of  their  corps.  Their  maxim  is  "  boni  judicis 
est  ampliare  jurisdictionem,"  and  their  power  the  more  danger- 
ous as  they  are  in  office  for  life,  and  not  responsible,  as  the  other 
functionaries  are,  to  the  elective  control.  The  constitution  has 
erected  no  such  single  tribunal,  knowing  that  to  whatever  hands 
confided,  with  the  corruptions  of  time  and  party,  its  members 
would  become  despots.  It  has  more  wisely  made  all  the  depart- 
ments co-equal  and  co-sovereign  within  themselves.  If  the  leg- 
islature fails  to  pass  laws  for  a  census,  for  paying  the  judges  and 
other  officers  of  government,  for  establishing  a  militia,  for  nat- 
uralization as  prescribed  by  the  constitution,  or  if  they  fail  to 
meet  in  congress,  the  judges  cannot  issue  their  mandamus  to 
them ;  if  the  President  fails  to  supply  the  place  of  a  judge,  to 
appoint  other  civil  or  military  officers,  to  issue  requisite  commis- 
sions, the  judges  cannot  force  him.  They  can  issue  their  man- 
damus or  distringas  to  no  executive  or  legislative  officer  to  en- 
force the  fulfflment  of  their  official  duties,  any  more  than  the 
president  or  legislature  may  issue  orders  to  the  judges  or  their 
officers.  Betrayed  by  English  example,  and  unaware,  as  it  should 
seem,  of  the  control  of  our  constitution  in  this  particular,  they 
have  at  times  overstepped  their  limit  by  undertaking  to  command 
executive  officers  in  the  discharge  of  their  executive  duties ;  but 
the  constitution,  m  keeping  three  departments  distinct  and  inde- 
pendent, restrains  the  authority  of  the  judges  to  judiciary  organs, 
as  it  does  the  executive  and  legislative  to  executive  and  legisla- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  I79 

tive  organs.  The  judges  certainly  have  more  frequent  occasion 
to  act  on  constitutional  questions,  because  the  laws  of  meum  and 
tuum  and  of  criminal  action,  forming  the  great  mass  of  the  sys- 
tem of  law,  constitute  their  particular  department.  When  the 
legislative  or  executive  functionaries  act  unconstitutionally,  they 
are  responsible  to  the  people  in  their  elective  capacity.  The  ex- 
emption of  the  judges  from  that  is  quite  dangerous  enough.  I 
Icnow  no  safe  depository  of  the  ultimate  powers  of  the  society 
but  the  people  themselves  ;  and  if  we  think  them  not  enlightened 
enough  to  exercise  their  control  with  a  wholesome  discretion, 
the  remedy  is  not  to  take  it  from  them,  but  to  inform  their  dis- 
cretion by  education.  This  is  the  true  corrective  of  abuses  of 
constitutional  power.  Pardon  me,  Sir,  for  this  difterence  of 
opinion.  My  personal  interest  in  such  questions  is  entirely  ex- 
tinct, but  not  my  wishes  for  the  longest  possible  continuance  of 
our  government  on  its  pure  principles  ;  if  the  three  powers  main- 
tain their  mutual  independence  on  each  other  it  may  last  long, 
but  not  so  if  either  can  assume  the  authorities  of  the  other.  I  ask 
your  candid  re-consideration  of  this  subject,  and  am  sufficiently 
3ure  you  will  form  a  candid  conclusion.  Accept  the  assurance 
of  my  great  respect. 


TO    MB,    PINCKJIET. 

MoNTicELLO,  September  80,  1820. 

Deak  Sm, — An  absence  of  some  time  from  home  has  occasioned 
me  to  be  thus  late  in  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  your  favor 
of  the  6th,  and  I  see  in  it  with  pleasure  evidences  of  your  con- 
tinued health  and  application  to  business.  It  is  now,  I  believe, 
about  twenty  years  since  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you,  and 
we  are  apt,  in  such  cases,  to  lose  sight  of  time,  and  to  conceive 
that  our  friends  remain  stationary  at  the  same  point  of  health  and 
vigor  as  when  we  last  saw  them.  So  I  perceive  by  your  letter 
you  think  with  respect  to  myself,  but  twenty  years  added  to 
fifty-seven  make  quite  a  different  man.  To  threescore  and  seven- 
teen add  two  years  of  prostrate  health,  and  you  have  the  old, 


ISO  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

infirm,  and  nerveless  body  I  now  am,  unable  to  write  but  with 
pain,  and  unwilling  to  think  without  necessity.  In  this  state  1 
leave  the  world  and  its  affairs  to  the  young  and  energetic,  and 
resign  myself  to  their  care,  of  whom  I  have  endeavored  to  take 
care  when  young.  I  read  but  one  newspaper  and  that  of  my 
own  State,  and  more  for  its  advertisements  than  its  news.  I 
have  not  read  a  speech  in  Congress  for  some  years.  I  have 
heard,  indeed,  of  the  questions  of  the  tariff  and  Missouri,  and 
formed  primi  facie  opinions  on  them,  but  without  investigation. 
As  to  the  tariff,  I  should  say  put  down  all  banks,  admit  none  but 
a  metallic  circulation,  that  will  take  its  proper  level  with  the  hke 
circulation  in  other  countries,  and  then  our  manufacturers  may 
work  in  fair  competition  with  those  of  other  countries,  and  the 
import  duties  which  the  government  may  lay  for  the  purposes  of 
revenue  will  so  far  place  them  above  equal  competition.  The 
Missouri  question  is  a  mere  party  trick.  The  leaders  of  federal- 
ism, defeated  in  their  schemes  of  obtaining  power  by  rallying 
partisans  to  the  principle  of  monarchism,  a  principle  of  personal 
not  of  local  division,  have  changed  their  tack,  and  thrown  out 
another  barrel  to  the  whale.  They  are  taking  advantage  of  the 
virtuous  feelings  of  the  people  to  effect  a  division  of  parties  by  a 
geographical  line  ;  they  expect  that  this  will  ensure  them,  on 
local  principles,  the  majority  they  could  never  obtain  on  princi- 
ples of  federalism  ;  but  they  are  still  putting  their  shoulder  to  the 
wrong  wheel ;  they  are  wasting  Jeremiads  on  the  miseries  of 
slavery,  as  if  we  were  advocates  for  it.  Sincerity  in  their  declamar 
tions  should  direct  their  efforts  to  the  true  point  of  difficulty,  and 
unite  their  counsels  with  ours  in  devising  some  reasonable  and 
practicable  plan  of  getting  rid  of  it.  Some  of  these  leaders,  if 
they  could  attain  the  power,  their  ambition  would  rather  use  it 
to  keep  the  Union  together,  but  others  have  ever  had  in  view  its 
separation.  If  they  push  it  to  that,  they  will  find  the  line  of 
separation  very  different  from  their  36°  of  latitude,  and  as  man- 
ufacturing and  navigating  States,  they  will  have  quarrelled  with 
their  bread  and  butter,  and  I  fear  not  that  after  a  little  trial  they 
will  think  better  of  it,  and  return  to  the  embraces  of  their  nat- 


CORRESPONDENOE  181 

oral  and  best  friends.  But  this  scheme  of  party  I  leave  to  those 
who  are  to  live  under  its  consequences.  We  who  have  gone  be- 
fore have  performed  an  honest  duty,  by  putting  in  the  power  of 
our  successors  a  state  of  happiness  which  no  nation  ever  before 
had  within  their  choice.  If  that  choice  is  to  throw  it  away,  the 
dead  will  have  neither  the  power  nor  the  right  to  control  them. 
I  must  hope,  nevertheless,  that  the  mass  of  our  honest  and  well- 
meaning  brethren  of  the  other  States,  will  discover  the  use  which 
designing  leaders  are  making  of  their  best  feelings,  and  will  see 
the  precipice  to  which  they  are  lead,  before  they  take  the  fatal 
leap.     God  grant  it,  and  to  you  health  and  happiness. 


ES^. 

MoNTiCELLO,  October  20,  1820. 

Deak  Sir, — In  yom:  favor  of  May  3d,  which  I  have  now  to 
acknowldge,  you  so  kindly  proffered  your  attentions  to  any  little 
matters  I  might  have  on  that  side  of  the  water,  that  I  take  the 
liberty  of  availing  myself  of  this  proof  of  your  goodness  so  far  as 
to  request  you  to  put  the  enclosed  catalogue  in  the  hands  of  some 
hottest  bookseller  of  London,  who  will  procure  and  forward  the 
books  to  me,  with  care  and  good  faith.  They  should  be  packed 
in  a  cheap  trunk,  and  not  put  on  ship-board  until  April,  as  they 
would  be  liable  to  damage  on  a  winter  passage.  I  ask  an  honest 
correspondent  in  that  line,  because,  when  we  begin  to  import  for 
the  library  of  our  Universary,  we  shall  need  one  worthy  of  entire 
confidence. 

I  send  this  letter  open  to  my  correspondent  in  Richmond, 
Captain  Bernard  Peyton,  with  a  request  that  he  will  put  into  it  a 
bill  of  exchange  on  London  of  £40  sterling,  which  of  course, 
therefore,  I  cannot  describe  to  you  by  naming  drawer  and  drawee. 
He  will  also  forward,  by  other  convej^ance,  the  duplicate  and 
triplicate  as  usual.  This  sum  would  more  than  cover  the  cost 
of  the  books  written  for,  according  to  their  prices  stated  in  print- 
ed catalogues ;  but  as  books  have  risen  with  other  things  in  price. 


182  JEFFERSON'S    WOEXS. 

I  have  enlarged  the  printed  amount  by  about  15  per  cent,  to 
cover  any  rise.  Still,  should  it  be  insufficient,  the  bookseller  is 
requested  to  dock  the  catalogue  to  the  amount  of  the  remittance. 
I  have  no  news  to  give  you ;  for  I  have  none  but  from  the 
newspapers,  and  believing  little  of  that  myself,  it  would  be  an 
unworthy  present  to  my  friends.  But  the  important  news 
hes  now  on  your  side  of  the  Atlantic.  England,  in  throes 
from  a  trifle,  as  it  would  seem,  but  that  trifle  the  symptom  of 
an  iiTemediable  disease  proceeding  from  a  long  course  of  ex- 
haustion by  efforts  and  burthens  beyond  her  natural  strength ; 
France  agonizing  between  royalists  and  constitutionalists ;  the 
other  States  of  Europe  pressing  on  to  revolution  and  the  rights 
of  man,  and  the  colossal  powers  of  Russia  and  Austria  mar- 
shalled against  them.  These  are  more  than  specks  of  hurri- 
cane in  the  horizon  of  the  world.  You,  who  are  young,  may 
live  to  see  its  issue  ;  the  beginning  only  is  for  my  time.  Nor  is 
our  side  of  the  water  entirely  untroubled,  the  boisterous  sea  of 
liberty  is  never  without  a  wave.  A  hideous  evil,  the  magnitude 
of  which  is  seen,  and  at  a  distance  only,  by  the  one  party,  and 
more  sorely  felt  and  sincerely  deplored  by  the  other,  from  the 
difiiculty  of  the  cure,  divides  us  at  this  moment  too  angrily. 
The  attempt  by  one  party  to  prohibit  willing  States  from  sharing 
the  evil,  is  thought  by  the  other  to  render  desperate,  by  accumu- 
lation, the  hope  of  its  final  eradication.  If  a  little  time,  however, 
is  given  to  both  parties  to  cool,  and  to  dispel  their  visionary 
fears,  they  will  see  that  concurring  in  sentiment  as  to  the  evil, 
moral  and  political,  the  duty  and  interest  of  both  is  to  concur  also 
in  divining  a  practicable  process  of  cure.  Should  time  not  be 
given,  and  the  schism  be  pushed  to  separation,  it  will  be  for  a 
short  term  only  ;  two  or  three  years  trial  will  bring  them  bac^, 
like  quarrelling  lovers  to  renewed  embraces,  and  increased  affec- 
tions. The  experiment  of  separation  would  soon  prove  to  both 
that  they  had  mutually  miscalculated  their  best  interests.  And 
even  were  the  parties  in  Congress  to  secede  in  a  passion,  the  so- 
berer people  would  call  a  convention  and  cement  again  the  sev- 
erance attempted  by  the  insanity  of  their  functionaries.     With 


OOKEESPONDENOE.  183 

this  consoling  view,  my  greatest  grief  -would  be  for  the  fatal  ef- 
fect of  such  an  event  on  the  hopes  and  happiness  of  the  world. 
We  exist,  and  are  quoted,  as  standing  proofs  that  a  government, 
so  modelled  as  to  rest  continually  on  the  will  of  the  whole  socie- 
ty, is  a  practicable  government.  Were  we  to  break  to  pieces, 
it  would  damp  the  hopes  and  the  efforts  of  the  good,  and  give 
triumph  to  those  of  the  bad  through  the  whole  enslaved  world. 
As  members,  therefore,  of  the  universal  society  of  mankind,  and 
standing  in  high  and  responsible  relation  with  them,  it  is  our 
sacred  duty  to  suppress  passion  among  ourselves,  and  not  to  blast 
the  confidence  we  have  inspired  of  proof  that  a  government  of 
reason  is  better  than  one  of  force.  This  letter  is  not  of  facts  but 
of  opinions,  as  you  will  observe ;  and  although  the  converse  is 
generally  the  most  acceptable,  I  do  not  know  that,  in  your  situa- 
tion, the  opinions  of  your  countrymen  may  not  be  as  desirable  to 
be  known  to  you  as  facts.  They  constitute,  indeed,  moral  facts, 
as  important  as  physical  ones  to  the  attention  of  the  public  func- 
tionary. Wishing  you  a  long  career  to  the  services  you  may 
render  your  country,  and  that  it  may  be  a  career  of  happiness 
and  prosperity  to  yourself,  I  salute  you  with  affectionate  attach- 
ment and  respect. 


TO    MH.    COKKEA. 

MoNTiCELLo,  October  24,  1820. 

Your  kind  letter,  dear  Sir,  of  October  12th,  was  handed  to  me 
by  Dr.  Cooper,  and  was  the  first  correction  of  an  erroneous  be- 
lief that  you  had  long  since  left  our  shores.  Such  had  been  Colo- 
nel Randolph's  opinion,  and  his  had  governed  mine.  I  received 
your  adieu  with  feelings  of  sincere  regret  at  the  loss  we  were  to 
sustain,  and  particularly  of  those  friendly  visits  by  which  you 
had  made  me  so  happy.  I  shall  feel,  too,  the  want  of  your 
counsel  and  approbation  in  what  we  are  doing  and  have  yet  to 
do  in  our  University,  the  last  of  my  mortal  cares,  and  the  last 
service  I  can  render  my  country.  But  turning  from  myself, 
throwmg  f.'gotism  behind  me,  and  looking  to  your  happiness,  it 


184  JEPFEKSON'S   "WOEKS. 

is  a  duty  and  consolation  of  friendship  to  consider  that  that  may 
be  promoted  by  your  return  to  your  own  country.  There  I  hope 
you  will  receive  the  honors  and  rewards  you  merit,  and  which 
may  make  the  rest  of  your  life  easy  and  happy  ;  there  too  you 
will  render  precious  services  by  promoting  the  science  of  your 
country,  and  blessing  its  future  generations  with  the  advantages 
that  bestows.  Nor  even  there  shall  we  lose  all  the  benefits  of  your 
friendship  ;  for  this  motive,  as  well  as  the  love  of  your  own 
country,  will  be  an  incitement  to  promote  that  intimate  harmony 
between  our  two  nations  which  is  so  much  the  interest  of  both. 
Nothing  is  so  important  as  that  America  shall  separate  herself 
from  the  systems  of  Europe,  and  establish  one  of  her  own.  Our 
circumstances,  our  pursuits,  our  interests,  are  distinct,  the  princi- 
ples of  our  policy  should  be  so  also.  All  entanglements  with 
that  quarter  of  the  globe  should  be  avoided  if  we  mean  that 
peace  and  justice  shall  be  the  polar  stars  of  the  American  socie- 
ties. I  had  written  a  letter  to  a  friend  while  you  were  here,  in 
a  part  of  which  these  sentiments  were  expressed,  and  I  had 
made  an  extract  from  it  to  put  into  your  hands,  as  containing  my 
creed  on  that  subject.  You  had  left  us,  however,  in  the  morn- 
ing earlier  than  I  had  been  aware  ;  still  I  enclose  it  to  you,  be- 
cause it  would  be  a  leading  principle  with  me,  had  I  longer  to 
live.  During  six  and  thirty  years  that  I  have  been  in  situations 
to  attend  to  the  conduct  and  characters  of  foreign  nations,  I  have 
found  the  government  of  Portugal  the  most  just,  inoffensive  and 
unambitious  of  any  one  with  which  we  had  concern,  without  a 
single  exception.  I  am  sure  that  this  is  the  character  of  ours 
also.  Two  such  nations  can  never  wish  to  quarrel  with  each  oth- 
er. Subordinate  officers  may  be  negligent,  may  have  their  pas- 
sions  and  partialities,  and  be  criminally  remiss  in  preventing  the 
enterprises  of  the  lawless  banditti  who  are  to  be  found  in  every 
seaport  of  every  country.  The  late  piratical  depredations  which 
your  commerce  has  suffered  as  well  as  ours,  and  that  of  other 
nations,  seem  to  have  been  committed  by  renegado  rovers  of  seve- 
ral nations,  French,  English,  American,  which  they  as  well  as 
we  have  not  been  careful  enough  to  suppress.     I  hope  our  Con- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  ,   185 

gress  now  about  to  meet  will  strengthen  the  measures  of  suppress- 
ion. Of  their  disposition  to  do  it  there  can  be  no  doubt ;  for  all 
men  of  moral  principle  must  be  shocked  at  these  atrocities.  1 
had  repeated  conversations  on  this  subject  with  the  President, 
while  at  his  seat  in  this  neighborhood.  No  man  can  abhor  these 
enormities  more  deeply.  I  trust  it  will  not  have  been  in  the 
power  of  abandoned  rovers,  nor  yet  of  negligent  functionaries,  to 
disturb  the  harmony  of  two  nations  so  much  disposed  to  mutual 
friendship,  and  interested  in  it.  To  this,  my  dear  friend,  you 
can  be  mainly  instrumental,  and  I  know  your  patriotism  and 
philanthropy  too  well  to  doubt  your  best  efforts  to  cement  us. 
In  these  I  pray  for  your  success,  and  that  heaven  may  long  pre- 
serve you  in- health  and  prosperity  to  do  all  the  good  to  mankind 
to  which  your  enlightened  and  benevolent  mind  disposes  you. 
Of  the  continuance  of  my  affectionate  friendship,  with  that  of 
my  life,  and  of  its  fervent  wishes  for  your  happiness,  accept  my 
sincere  assurance. 


TO  THE  REVEREND  JARED  SPARKS. 

MoNTicELLo,  November  4,  1820. 

Sir, — ^Your  favor  of  September  18th  is  just  received,  with  the 
book  accompanying  it.  Its  delay  was  owing  to  that  of  the  box 
of  books  from  Mr.  Guegan,  in  which  it  was  packed.  Being 
just  setting  out  on  a  journey  I  have  time  only  to  look  over  the 
summary  of  contents.  In  this  I  see  nothing  in  which  I  am  like- 
ly to  differ  materially  from  you.  I  hold  the  precepts  of  Jesus, 
as  delivered  by  himself,  to  be  the  most  pure,  benevolent,  and 
sublime  which  have  ever  been  preached  to  man.  I  adhere  to 
the  principles  of  the  first  age  ;  and  consider  all  subsequent  inno- 
vations as  corruptions  of  his  religion,  having  no  foundation  in 
what  came  from  him.  The  metaphysical  insanities  of  Athana- 
sius,  of  Loyola,  and  of  Calvin,  are,  to  my  understanding,  mere 
relapses  into  polytheism,  differing  from  paganism  only  by  being 
more  unintelligible.     The  religion  of  Jesus  is  founded  in  the 


186  JEFFEESON'S  "WORKS. 

Unity  of  God,  and  this  principle  chiefly,  gave  it  triumph  over 
the  rabble  of  heathen  gods  then  acknowledged.  Thinking  men 
of  all  nations  rallied  readily  to  the  doctrine  of  one  only  God, 
and  embraced  it  with  the  pure  morals  which  Jesus  inculcated. 
If  the  freedom  of  religion,  guaranteed  to  us  by  law  in  theory, 
can  ever  rise  in  practice  under  the  overbearing  inquisition  of 
public  opinion,  truth  will  prevail  over  fanaticism,  and  the  genuine 
doctrines  of  Jesus,  so  long  perverted  by  his  pseudo-priests,  will 
dgain  be  restored  to  their  origiaal  purity.  This  reformation  will 
advance  with  the  other  improvements  of  the  human  mind,  but 
too  late  for  me  to  witness  it.  Accept  my  thanks  for  your  book, 
in  which  I  shall  read  with  pleasure  your  developments  of  the 
subject,  and  with  them  the  assurance  of  my  high  respect. 


TO    JOSEPH    0.    CABELL. 

Poplar  Forest,  November  28,  1820. 

Dear  Sib, — ^I  sent  in  due  time  the  Report  of  the  Visitors  to 
the  Governor,  with  a  request  that  he  would  endeavor  to  con- 
vene the  Literary  Board  in  time  to  lay  it  before  the  legislature 
on  the  second  day  of  their  session.  It  was  enclosed  in  a  letter 
which  will  explain  itself  to  you.  If  delivered  before  the  crowd 
of  other  business  presses  on  them,  they  may  act  on  it  immedi- 
ately, and  before  there  will  have  been  time  for  unfriendly  com- 
binations and  maneuvi'es  by  the  enemies  of  the  institution.  I 
enclose  you  now  a  paper  presenting  some  views  which  may  be 
useful  to  you  in  conversations,  to  rebut  exaggerated  estimates  of 
what  our  institution  is  to  cost,  and  reproaches  of  deceptive  esti- 
mates. One  hundred  and  sixty-two  thousand  three  hundred  and 
sixty-four  dollars  will  be  about  the  cost  of  the  whole  establish- 
ment, when  completed.  Not  an  office  at  Washington  has  cost 
less.  The  single  building  of  the  court  house  of  Henrico  has 
cost  nearly  that ;  and  the  massive  walls  of  the  millions  of  bricks 
of  William  and  Mary  could  not  now  be  built  for  a  less  sum. 

Surely  Governor  Clinton's  display  of  the  gigantic  efforts  of 


COERESPONDENOE.  187 

New  York  towards  the  education  of  her  citizens,  will  stimulate 
the  pride  as  well  as  the  patriotism  of  our  legislature,  to  look  to 
the  reputation  and  safety  of  their  own  country,  to  rescue  it  from 
the  degradation  of  becoming  the  Barbary  of  the  Union,  and  of 
falling  into  the  ranks  of  our  own  negroes.  To  that  condition  it 
is  fast  sinking.  We  shall  be  in  the  hands  of  the  other  States, 
what  our  indigenous  predecessors  were  when  invaded  by  the 
science  and  arts  of  Europe.  The  mass  of  education  in  Virginia, 
before  the  Revolution,  placed  her  with  the  foremost  of  her  sister 
colonies.  What  is  her  education  now  ?  Where  is  it  ?  The 
little  we  have  we  import,  like  beggars,  from  other  States ;  or 
import  their  beggars  to  bestow  on  us  their  miserable  crumbs. 
And  what  is  wanting  to  restore  us  to  our  station  among  our  con- 
federates ?  Not  more  money  from  the  people.  Enough  has 
been  raised  by  them,  and  appropriated  to  this  very  object. 
It  is  that  it  should  be  employed  understandingly,  and  for  their 
greatest  good.  That  good  requires,  that  while  they  are  instruct- 
ed in  general,  competently  to  the  common  business  of  life,  others 
should  employ  their  genius  with  necessary  information  to  the 
useful  arts,  to  inventions  for  saving  labor  and  increasing  our 
comforts,  to  nourishing  our  health,  to  civil  government,  military 
science,  &c. 

Would  it  not  have  a  good  effect  for  the  friends  of  this  Uni- 
versity to  take  the  lead  in  proposing  and  etfecting  a  practical 
scheme  of  elementary  schools  ?  To  assume  the  character  of  the 
friends,  rather  than  the  opponents  of  that  object.  The  present 
plan  has  appropriated  to  the  primary  schools  forty-five  thousand 
dollars  for  three  years,  making  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  thou- 
sand dollars.  I  should  be  glad  to  know  if  this  sum  has  educated 
one  hundred  and  thirty-five  poor  children  ?  I  doubt  it  much. 
And  if  it  has,  they  have  cost  us  one  thousand  dollars  a  piece  for 
what  might  have  been  done  with  thirty  dollars.  Supposing  the 
literary  revenue  to  be  sixty  thousand  dollars,  I  think  it  demon- 
strable, that  this  sum,  equally  divided  between  the  two  objects, 
would  amply  suffice  for  both.  One  hundred  counties,  divided 
into  about  twelve  wards  each,  on  an  average,  and  a  school  in 


188  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

each  ward  of  perhaps  ten  children,  would  be  one  thousand  and 
two  hundred  schools,  distributed  proportionably  over  the  surface 
of  the  State.  The  inhabitants  of  each  ward,  meeting  together 
(as  when  they  work  on  the  roads),  building  good  log  houses  for 
their  school  and  teacher,  and  contributing  for  his  provisions,  ra- 
tions of  pork,,  beef,  and  corn,  in  the  proportion  each  of  his  other 
taxes,  would  thus  lodge  and  feed  him  without  feeling  it ;  and 
those  of  them  who  are  able,  paying  for  the  tuition  of  their  own 
children,  would  leave  no  call  on  the  public  fund  but  for  the 
tuition  fee  of,  here  and  there,  an  accidental  pauper,  who  would 
still  be  fed  and  lodged  with  his  parents.  Suppose  this  fee  ten 
dollars,  and  three  hundred  dollars  apportioned  to  a  county  on  an 
average,)  more  or  less  proportioned,)  would  there  be  thirty  such 
paupers  for  every  county  ?  I  think  not.  The  truth  is,  that  the 
want  of  common  education  with  us  is  not  from  our  poverty,  but 
from  want  of  an  orderly  system.  More  money  is  now  paid  for 
the  education  of  a  part,  than  would  be  paid  for  that  of  the  whole, 
if  systematically  arranged.  Six  thousand  common  schools  in 
New  York,  fifty  pupils  in  each,  three  hundred  thousand  in  all  ; 
one  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  dollars  annually  paid  to  the 
masters ;  forty  established  academies,  with  two  thousand  two 
hundred  and  eighteen  pupils ;  and  five  colleges,  with  seven  hun- 
dred and  eighteen  students ;  to  which  last  classes  of  institutions 
seven  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  dollars  have  been  given ; 
and  the  whole  appropriations  for  education  estimated  at  two  and 
a  half  millions  of  dollars  !  What  a  pigmy  to  this  is  Virginia  be- 
come, with  a  population  almost  equal  to  that  of  New  York ! 
And  whence  this  difference  ?  From  the  difference  their  rulers 
set  on  the  value  of  knowledge,  and  the  prosperity  it  produces. 
But  still,  if  a  pigmy,  let  her  do  what  a  pigmy  may  do.  If  among 
fifty  children  in  each  of  the  six  thousand  schools  of  New  York, 
there  are  only  paupers  enough  to  employ  twenty-five  dollars  of 
public  money  to  each  school,  smely  among  the  ten  children  of 
each  of  our  one  thousand  and  two  hundred  schools,  the  same 
sum  of  twenty-five  dollars  to  each  school  will  teach  its  paupers, 
(five  times  as  much  as  to  the  same  number  in  New  York,)  and 


COERESPONDEITOE.  189 

will  amount  for  the  whole  to  thirty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  the 
one-half  only  of  our  literary  revenue. 

Do  then,  dear  Sir,  think  of  this,  and  engage  our  friends  to  take 
in  hand  the  whole  subject.  It  will  reconcile  the  friends  of  the 
elementary  schools,  and  none  are  more  warmly  so  than  myself, 
lighten  the  difficulties  of  the  University,  and  promote  in  every 
order  of  men  the  degree  of  instruction  proportioned  to  their  con- 
dition, and  to  their  views  in  life.  It  will  combine  with  the  mass 
of  our  force,  a  wise  direction  of  it,  which  will  insure  to  our 
country  its  future  prosperity  and  safety.  I  had  formerly  thought 
that  visitors  of  the  school  might  be  chosen  by  the  county,  and 
charged  to  provide  teachers  for  every  ward,  and  to  superintend 
them.  I  now  think  it  would  be  better  for  every  ward  to  choose 
its  own  resident  visitor,  whose  business  it  would  be  to  keep  a 
teacher  in  the  ward,  to  superintend  the  school,  and  to  call  meet- 
ings of  the  ward  for  all  purposes  relating  to  it ;  their  accounts  to 
be  settled,  and  wards  laid  off  by  the  courts.  I  think  ward  elec- 
tions better  for  many  reasons,  one  of  which  is  sufficient,  that  it 
will  keep  elementary  education  out  of  the  hands  of  fanaticising 
preachers,  who,  in  county  elections,  would  be  universally  chosen, 
and  the  predominant  sect  06  the  county  would  possess  itself  of 
all  its  schools. 

A  wrist  stiffened  by  an  ancient  accident,  now  more  so  by  the 
effect  of  age,  renders  writing  a  slow  and  irksome  operation  with 
me.  I  cannot,  therefore,  present  these  views,  by  separate  letters 
to  each  of  our  colleagues  in  the  legislature,  but  must  pray  you  to 
communicate  them  to  Mr.  Johnson  and  General  Breckenridge, 
and  to  request  them  to  consider  this  as  equally  meant  for  them. 
Mr.  Gordon  being  the  local  representative  of  the  University, 
and  among  its  most  zealous  friends,  would  be  a  more  useful 
second  to  General  Breckenridge  in  the  House  of  Delegates,  by 
a  free  communication  of  what  concerns  the  University,  with  which 
he  has  had  little  opportunity  of  becoming  acquainted.  So,  also, 
would  it  be  to  Mr.  Rives,  who  would  be  a  friendly  advocate.         , 

Accept  the  assurances  of  my  constant  and  affectionate  esteem 
and  respect. 


190  JEFFEKSON'S   WORKS. 


TO    MK.    MADISON. 

Poplar  Fouest,  November  29,  1820. 

Deah  Sir, — The  enclosed  letter  from  our  ancient  friend 
Tenche  Coxe,  came  unfortunately  to  Monticello  after  I  had  left 
it,  and  has  had  a  dilatory  passage  to  this  place,  where  I  received 
it  yesterday,  and  obey  its  injunction  of  immediate  transmission 
to  you.  We  should  have  recognized  the  style  even  without  a 
signature,  and  although  so  written  as  to  be  much  of  it  indeci- 
pherable. This  is  a  sample  of  the  effects  we  may  expect 
from  the  late  mischievous  law  vacating  every  four  years  nearly 
all  the  executive  officers  of  the  government.  It  saps  the  consti- 
tutional and  salutary  functions  of  the  President,  and  introduces 
a  principle  of  intrigue  and  corruption,  which  will  soon  leaven 
the  mass,  not  only  of  Senators,  but  of  citizens.  It  is  more  bane- 
ful than  the  attempt  which  failed  in  the  beginning  of  the  gov- 
ernment, to  make  all  officers  irremovable  but  with  the  consent 
of  the  Senate.  This  places,  every  four  years,  all  appointments 
under  their  power,  and  even  obliges  them  to  act  on  every  one 
nomination.  It  will  keep  in  constant  excitement  all  the  hungry 
cormorants  for  office,  render  them,- as  well  as  those  in  place, 
sycophants  to  their  Senators,  engage  these  in  eternal  intrigue  to 
turn  out  one  and  put  in  another,  in  cabals  to  swap  work  ;  and 
make  of  them  what  all  executive  directories  become,  mere  sinks 
of  corruption  and  faction.  This  must  have  been  one  of  the  mid- 
night signatures  of  the  President,  when  he  had  not  time  to  con- 
sider, or  even  to  read  the  law  ;  and  the  more  fatal  as  being  irre- 
pealable  but  with^the  consent  of  the  Senate,  which  will  never 
be  obtained. 

F.  Gilmer  has  communicated  to  me  Mr.-  Correa's  letter  to  him 
of  adieux  to  his  friends  here,  among  whom  he  names  most  af- 
fectionately Mrs.  Madison  and  yourself.  No  foreigner,  I  believe, 
has  ever  carried  with  him  more  friendly  regrets.  .  He  was  to  sail 
the  next  day  (November  10)  in  the  British  packet  for  England,  and 
thence  take  his  passage  in  January  for  Brazil.  His  present  views 
are  of  course  liable  to  be  affected  by  the  events  of  Portugal,  and 


OOEKESPONDENCE.  191 

the  possible  effects  of  their  example  on  Brazil.  I  expect  to  re- 
turn to  Monticello  about  the  middle  of  the  ensuing  month,  and 
salute  you  with  constant  affection  and  respect. 


TO    THOMAS     RITCHIE. 

MoNTioELLO,  December  25,  1820. 

Deab  Sir, — On  my  return  home  after  a  long  absence,  I  find 
here  your  favor  of  November  the  23d,  with  Colonel  Taylor's 
"Constructi«m  Construed,"  which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send 
me,  in  the  name  of  the  author  as  well  as  yourself.  Permit  me, 
if  you  please,  to  use  the  same  channel  for  conveying  to  him  the 
thanks  I  render  you  also  for  this  mark  of  attention.  I  shall  read 
it,  I  know,  with  edification,  as  I  did  his  Inquiry,  to  which  I  ac- 
knowledge myself  indebted  for  many  valuable  ideas,  and  for  the 
correction  of  some  errors  of  early  opinion,  never  seen  in  a  cor- 
rect light  until  presented  to  me  in  that  work.  That  the  present 
volume  is  equally  orthodox,  I  know  before  reading  it,  because  I 
know  that  Colonel  Taylor  and  myself  have  rarely,  if  ever,  dif- 
fered in  any  political  principle  of  importance.  Every  act  of  his 
life,  and  every  word  he  ever  wrote,  satisfies  me  of  this.  So,  also, 
as  to  the  two  Presidents,  late  and  now  in  office,  I  know  them 
both  to  be  of  principles  as  truly  republican  as  any  men  living 
If  there  be  anything  amiss,  therefore,  in  the  present  state  of  oui 
affairs,  as  the  formidable  deficit  lately  unfolded  to  us  indicates 
I  ascribe  it  to  the  inattention  of  Congress  to  their  duties,  to  theii 
unwise  dissipation  and  waste  of  the  public  contributions.  They 
seemed,  some  little  while  ago,  to  be  at  a  loss  for  objects  whereon 
to  throw  away  the  supposed  fathomless  funds  of  the  treasury.  1 
had  feared  the  result,  because  I  saw  among  them  some  of  my  old 
fellow  laborers,  of  tried  and  known  principles,  yet  often  in  their 
minorities.  I  am  aware  that  in  one  of  their  most  ruinous  vagar- 
ies, the  people  were  themselves  betrayed  into  the  same  phrenzy 
with  their  Representatives.  The  deficit  produced,  and  a  heavy 
•ax  to  supply  it,  will,  I  trust,  bring  both  to  their  sober  senses. 


192  JEFFERSON'S    "WORKS. 

But  it  is  not  from  this  branch  of  government  we  have  most  to 
fear.  Taxes  and  short  elections  will  keep  them  right.  The  ju- 
diciary of  the  United  States  is  the  subtle  corps  of  sappers  and 
miners  constantly  working  under  ground  to  undermine  the  foun- 
dations of  our  confederated  fabric.  They  are  construing  our 
constitution  from  a  co-ordination  of  a  general  and  special  gov- 
ernment to  a  general  and  supreme  one  alone.  This  will  lay  all 
things  at  their  feet,  and  they  are  too  well  versed  in  English  law  to 
forget  the  maxim,  "  boni  judicis  est  ampliare  jurisdictionem." 
We  shall  see  if  they  are  bold  enough  to  take  the  daring  stride 
their  five  lawyers  have  lately  taken.  If  they  do,  then,  with  the 
editor  of  our  book,  in  his  address  to  the  pulalic,  I  will  say,  that 
"  against  this  every  man  should  raise  his  voice,"  and  more, 
should  uplift  his  arm.  Who  wrote  this  admirable  address  ? 
Sound,  luminous,  strong,  not  a  word  too  much,  nor  one  which 
can  be  changed  but  for  the  worse.  That  pen  should  go  on,  lay 
bare  these  wounds  of  our  constitution,  expose  the  decisions  seria- 
tim, and  arouse,  as  it  is  able,  the  attention  of  the  nation  to  these 
bold  speculators  on  its  patience.  Having  found,  from  experience, 
that  impeachment  is  an  impracticable  thing,  a  mere  scare-crow, 
they  consider  themselves  secure  for  life ;  they  sculk  from  responsi- 
bility to  public  opinion,  the  only  remaining  hold  on  them,  under  a 
practice  first  introduced  into  England  by  Lord  'Mansfield.  An 
opinion  is  huddled  up  in  conclave,  perhaps  by  a  majority  of  one, 
delivered  as  if  unanimous,  and  with  the  silent  acquiescence  of 
lazy  or  timid  associates,  by  a  crafty  chief  judge,  who  sophisti- 
cates the  law  to  his  mind,  by  the  turn  of  his  own  reasoning.  A 
judiciary  law  was  once  reported  by  the  Attorney  General  to 
Congress,  requiring  each  judge  to  deliver  his  opinion  seriatim 
and  openly,  and  then  to  give  it  in  writing  to  the  clerk  to  be  en- 
tered in  the  record.  A  judiciary  independent  of  a  king  or  ex- 
ecutive alone,  is  a  good  thing  ;  but  independence  of  the  will  of 
the  nation  is  a  solecism,  at  least  in  a  republican  government. 

But  to  return  to  your  letter  ;  you  ask  for  my  opinion  of  the 
work  you  send  me,  and  to  let  it  go  out  to  the  public.  This  I 
have  ever  made  a  point  of  declining,  (one  or  twa  instances  only 


CORRESPONDENCE.  193 

excepted.)  Complimentary  thanks  to  writers  who  have  sent  me 
their  works,  have  betrayed  me  sometimes  before  the  public,  with- 
out my  consent  having  beeu  asked.  But  I  am  far  from  presum- 
ing to  direct  the  reading  of  my  fellow  citizens,  who  are  good 
enough  judges  themselves  of  what  is  worthy  their  reading.  I 
am,  also,  too  desirous  of  quiet  to  place  myself  in  the  way  of  con- 
tention. Against  this  I  am  admonished  by  bodily  decay,  which 
cannot  be  unaccompanied  by  coiTesponding  wane  of  the  mind. 
Of  this  I  am  as  yet  sensible,  sufficiently  to  be  unwilling  to  trust 
myself  before  the  public,  and  when  I  cease  to  be  so,  I  hope  that 
my  friends  will  be  too  careful  of  me  to  draw  me  forth  and  pre- 
sent me,  like  a  Priam  in  armor,  as  a  spectacle  for  public  com- 
passion. I  hope  our  political  bark  will  ride  through  all  its  dan- 
gers ;  but  I  can  in  future  be  but  an  inert  passenger. 

I  salute  you  with  sentiments  of  great  friendship  and  respect. 


TO    M.    DE    LA    FATETTE. 

MoNTiuici.i.o,  Di'cember  26,  1820. 

It  is  long,  indeed,  my  very  dear  friend,  since  I  have  been  able 
to  address  a  letter  to  you.  For  more  than  two  years  my  health 
has  been  sj  entirely  prostrate,  that  I  have,  of  necessity,  inter- 
mitted all  correspondence.  The  dislocated  wrist,  too,  which 
perhaps  you  may  recollect,  has  now  become  so  stiff  from  the 
effects  of  age,  that  writing  is  become  a  slow  and  painful  opera- 
tion, and  scarcely  ever  undertaken  but  under  the  goad  of  imperi- 
ous business.  In  the  meantime  your  country  has  been  going  on 
less  well  than  I  had  hoped.  But  it  will  go  on.  The  light  which 
has  been  shed  on  the  mind  of  man  through  the  civilized  world, 
has  given  it  a  new  direction,  from  which  no  human  power  can 
divert  it.  The  sovereigns  of  Europe  who  are  wise,  or  have  wise 
counsellors,  see  this,  and  bend  to  the  breese  which  blows  ;  the 
unwise  alone  stiffen  and  meet  its  inevitable  crush.  The  volcanic 
rumblings  in  the  bowels  of  Europe,  from  north  to  south,  seem  to 

V.)L.  V]l.  1.^ 


194  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

threaten  a  general  explosion,  and  the  march  of  armies  into  Italy 
cannot  end  in  a  simple  march.  The  disease  of  liberty  is  catch- 
ing ;  those  armies  will  take  it  in  the  south,  carry  it  thence  to  their 
own  country,  spread  there  the  infection  of  revolution  and  repre- 
sentative government,  and  raise  its  people  from  the  prone  con- 
dition of  brutes  to  the  erect  altitude  of  man.  Some  fear  our  en- 
velopment in  the  wars  engendering  from  the  unsettled  state  of 
our  aifairs  with  Spain,  and  therefore  are  anxious  for  a  ratifica- 
tion of  our  treaty  with  her.  I  fear  no  such  thing,  and  hope  that 
if  ratified  by  Spain  it  will  be  rejected  here.  We  may  justly  say 
to  Spain,  "  when  this  negotiation  commenced,  twenty  years  ago, 
your  authority  was  acknowledged  by  those  you  are  selling  to  us. 
That  authority  is  now  renounced,  and  their  right  of  self-disposal 
asserted.  In  buying  them  from  you,  then,  we  buy  but  a  war- 
litle,  a  right  to  subdue  them,  which  yon  can  neither  convey  nor 
we  acquire.  This  is  a  family  quarrel  in  which  we  have  no  right 
to  meddle.  Settle  it  between  yourselves,  and  we  will  then  treat 
with  the  party  whose  right  is  acknowledged."  With  whom  that 
will  be,  no  doubt  can  be  entertained.  And  why  should  we  re- 
volt them  by  purchasing  them  as  cattle,  rather  than  receiving 
them  as  fellow-men  ?  Spain  has  held  off  until  she  sees  they  are 
lost  to  her,  and  now  thinks  it  better  to  get  something  than  no- 
thing for  them.  When  she  shall  see  South  America  equally  des- 
perate, she  will  be  wise  to  sell  that  also. 

With  us  things  are  going  on  well.  The  boisterous  sea  of  lib- 
erty indeed  is  never  without  a  wave,  and  that  from  Missouri  is 
now  rolling  towards  us,  but  we  shall  ride  over  it  as  we  have  over 
all  others.  It  is  not  a  moral  question,  but  one  merely  of  power. 
Its  object  is  to  raise  a  geographical  principle  for  the  choice  of  a 
president,  and  the  noise  will  be  kept  up  till  that  is  effected.  All 
know  that  permitting  the  slaves  of  the  south  to  spread  into  the 
west  will  not  add  one  being  to  that  unfortunate  condition,  that 
it  will  increase  the  happiness  of  those  existing,  and  by  spreading 
them  over  a  larger  surface,  will  dilute  the  evil  everywhere,  and 
facilitate  the  means  of  getting  finally  rid  of  it,  an  event  more 
anxiously  wished  by  those  on  whom  it  presses  than  by  the  noisy 


CORRESPONDENCE.  195 

pretenders  to  exclusive  humanity.  In  the  meantime,  it  is  a  lad- 
der for  rivals  climbing  to  power. 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Porrey,  of  March  18th,  1819,  I  informed 
him  of  the  success  of  our  application  to  Congress  on  his  behalf. 
I  enclosed  this  letter  to  you,  but  hearing  nothing  from  him,  and 
as  you  say  nothing  of  it  in  yours  of  July  20th,  I  am  not  without 
fear  it  may  have  miscarried.  In  the  present  I  enclose  for  him 
the  Auditor's  certificate,  and  the  letters  of  General  Washington 
and  myself,  which  he  had  forwarded  to  me  with  a  request  of 
their  return.  Your  kindness  in  delivering  thts  will  render  un- 
necessary another  letter  from  me,  an  effort  which  necessarily 
obliges  me  to  spare  myself. 

If  you  shall  hear  from  me  more  seldom  than  heretofore,  ascribe 
it,  my  ever  dear  friend,  to  the  heavy  load  of  seventy-seven  years 
and  to  waning  health,  but  not  to  weakened  affections;  these  will 
continue  what  they  have  ever  been,  and  will  ever  be  sincere  and 
warm  to  the  latest  breath  of  yours  devotedly. 


TO     MB.     EOSCOE. 

MoNTiCKLi.o,  December  27,  1820. 

Dear  Sir, — Your  letter  received  more  than  a  twelvemonth 
ago,  with  the  two  tracts  on  penal  jurisprudence,  and  the  literary 
institution  of  Liverpool,  ought  long  since  to  have  called  for  the 
thanks  I  now  return,  had  it  been  in  my  power  sooner  to  have 
tendered  them.  But  a  long  continuance  of  ill  health  has  sus- 
pended all  power  of  answering  the  kind  attentions  with  which 
I  have  been  honored  during  it ;  and  it  is  only  now  that  a  state 
of  slow  and  uncertain  convalescence  enables  me  to  make  ac- 
knowledgments which  have  been  so  long  and  painfully  delayed. 
The  treatise  on  penal  jurisprudence  I  read  with  great  pleasure. 
Beccaria  had  demonstrated  general  principles,  but  practical  appli- 
cations were  difficult.  Our  States  are  trying  them  with  more  or 
less  success  ;  and  the  great  light  you  have  thrown  on  the  subject 
will,  I  am  sure,  be  useful  to  our  experiment.     For  the  thing,  as 


196  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

yet,  is  but  in  experiment.  Your  Liverpool  institution  will  a'so 
aid  us  in  the  organization  of  our  new  University,  an  establish- 
ment now  in  progress  in  this  State,  and  to  which  my  remaining 
days  and  faculties  will  be  devoted.  When  ready  for  its  Profes- 
sors, we  shall  apply  for  them  chiefly  to  your  island.  Were  we 
content  to  remain  stationary  in  science,  we  should  take  them  from 
among  ourselves ;  but,  desirous  of  advancing,  we  must  seek 
them  in  countries  already  in  advance  ;  and  identity  of  language 
points  to  our  best  resource.  To  furnish  inducements,  we  pro- 
vide for  the  Professors  separate  buildings,  in  which  themselves 
and  their  families  may  be  handsomely  and  comfortably  lodged, 
and  to  liberal  salaries  will  be  added  lucrative  perquisites.  This 
institution  will  be  based  on  the  illimitable  freedom  of  the  human 
mind.  For  here  we  are  not  afraid  to  follow  truth  wherever  it 
may  lead,  nor  to  tolerate  any  error  so  long  as  reason  is  left  free 
to  combat  it. 

We  are  looking  with  wonder  at  what  is  passing  among  yon. 
It 

"  Eesembles  ocean  into  tempest  wrouglit, 
To  waft  a  feather,  or  to  drown  a  fly." 

There  must  be  something  in  these  agitations  more  than  meets 
the  eye  of  a  distant  spectator.  Your  queen  must  be  used  in  this 
as  a  rallying  point  merely,  around  which  are  gathering  the  dis- 
contents of  every  quarter  and  character.  If  these  flowed  from 
theories  of  government  only,  and  if  merely  from  the  heads  of 
speculative  men,  they  would  admit  of  parley,  of  negotiation,  of 
management.  But  I  fear  they  are  the  workings  of  hungry  bel- 
lies, which  nothing  but  food  will  fill  and  quiet.  I  sincerely  wish 
you  safely  out  of  them.  Circumstances  have  nourished  between 
our  kindred  countries  angry  dispositions  which  both  ought  long 
since  to  have  banished  from  their  bosoms.  I  have  ever  consid- 
ered a  cordial  affection  as  the  first  interest  of  both.  No  nation 
on  earth  can  hurt  us  so  much  as  yours,  none  be  more  useful  to 
you  than  ours.  The  obstacle,  we  have  believed,  was  in  the 
obstinate  and  unforgiving  temper  of  your  late  king,  and  a  con- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  197 

tinuance  of  his  prejudices  kept  up  from  habit,  after  he  was  with 
drawn  from  power.  I  hope  T  now  see  symptoms  of  sounder 
views  in  your  government ;  in  which  I  know  it  will  be  cordially 
met  by  ours,  as  it  would  have  been  by  every  administration 
which  has  existed  under  our  present  constitution.  None  desired 
it  more  cordially  than  myself,  whatever  different  opinions  were 
impressed  on  your  government  by  a  party  who  wishes  to  have 
its  weight  in  their  scale  as  its  exclusive  friends. 

My  ancient  friend  and  classmate,  James  Maury,  informs  me  by 
letter  that  he  has  sent  me  a  bust  which  I  shall  receive  with  great 
pleasure  and  thankfulness,  and  shall  arrange  in  honorable  file  with 
those  of  some  cherished  characters.  Will  you  permit  me  to 
place  here  my  affectionate  souvenirs  of  him,  and  accept  for  your- 
self the  assurance  of  the  highest  consideration  and  esteem. 


TO   FRANCIS     EPPES. 

MoNTiCEi,i,o.  January  19,  1821. 

Deah-  Francis, — Your  letter  of  the  1st  came  safely  to  hand. 
I  am  sorry  you  have  lost  Mr.  Elliot,  however  the  kindness  of 
Dr.  Cooper  will  be  able  to  keep  you  in  the  track  of  what  is 
worthy  of  your  time. 

You  ask  my  opinion  of  Lord  Bolingbroke  and  Thomas  Paine. 
They  were  alike  in  making  bitter  enemies  of  the  priests  and 
pharisees  of  their  day.  Both  were  honest  men  ;  both  advocates 
for  human  liberty.  Paine  wrote  for  a  country  which  permitted 
him  to  push  his  reasoning  to  whatever  length  it  would  go.  Lord 
Bolingbroke  in  one  restrained  by  a  constitution,  and  by  public 
opinion.  He  was  called  indeed  a  tory ;  but  his  writings  prove 
him  a  stronger  advocate  for  libei'ty  than  any  of  his  countrymen, 
the  whigs  of  the  present  day.  Irritated  by  his  exile,  he  com- 
mitted one  act  unworthy  of  him,  in  connecting  himself  momen- 
tarily with  a  prince  rejected  by  his  country.  But  he  redeemed 
that  single  act  by  his  establishment  of  the  principles  which  proved 
it  to  be  wrong.     These  two  persons  differed  remarkably  in  the 


198  JEFFERSON'S    WOKKS. 

style  of  their  writing,  each  leaving  a  model  of  what  is  most  per- 
fect in  both  extremes  of  the  simple  and  the  sublime.  No  writer 
has  exceeded  Paine  in  ease  and  familiarity  of  style,  in  perspi- 
cuity of  expression,  happiness  of  elucidation,  and  in  simple  and 
unassuming  language.  In  this  he  may  be  compared  with  Dr. 
Franklin  ;  and  indeed  his  Common  Sense  was,  for  awhile,  be- 
lieved to  have  been  written  by  Dr.  Franklin,  and  published  un- 
der the  borrowed  name  of  Paine,  who  had  come  over  with  him 
from  England.  Lord  Bolingbrbke's,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a 
style  of  the  highest  order.  The  lofty,  rythmical,  full-flowing 
eloquence  of  Cicero.  Periods  of  just  measure,  their  members 
proportioned,  their  close  full  and  round.  His  conceptions,  too, 
are  bold  and  strong,  his  diction  copious,  polished  and  command- 
ing as  his  subject.  His  writings  are  certainly  the  finest  samples 
in  the  English  language,  of  the  eloquence  proper  for  the  Senate. 
His  political  tracts  are  safe  reading  for  the  most  timid  religion- 
ist, his  philosophical,  for  those  who  are  not  afraid  to  trust  their 
reason  with  disc^ussions  of  right  and  wrong. 

You  have  asked  my  opinion  of  these  persons,  and,  to  you,  I 
have  given  it  freely.  But,  remember,  that  I  am  old,  that  I  wish 
not  to  make  new  enemies,  nor  to  give  offence  to  those  who 
would  consider  a  difference  of  opinion  as  sufficient  ground  for 
unfriendly  dispositions.  God  bless  you,  and  make  you  what  I 
wish  you  to  be. 


TO    ARCHIBALD      THWEAT. 

MoNTicKLi.o,  January  19,  1821. 

Dear  Sib, — I  duly  received  your  favor  of  the  11th,  covering 
Judge  Roane's  letter,  which  I  now  return.  Of  the  kindness 
of  his  sentiments  expressed  towards  myself  I  am  highly  sensi- 
ble ;  and  could  I  believe  that  my  public  services  had  merited  the 
approbation  he  so  indulgently  bestows,  the  satisfaction  I  should 
derive  from  it  would  be  reward  enough  to  his  wish  that  I  would 
take  a  part  in  the  transactions  of  the  present  day.     I  am  sensi- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  199 

ble  of  my  incompetence.  For  first,  I  know  little  about  them, 
having  long  withdrawn  my  attention  from  public  affairs,  and  re- 
signed myself  with  folded  arms  to  the  care  of  those  who  are  to 
care  for  us  all.  And,  next,  the  hand  of  time  pressing  heavily  on 
me,  in  mind  as  well  as  body,  leaves  to  neither  sufficient  energy 
to  engage  in  public  contentions.  I  am  sensible  of  the  inroads 
daiiy  making  by  the  federal,  into  the  jurisdiction  of  its  co-ordi- 
nate associates,  the  State  governments.  The  legislative  and  ex- 
ecutive branches  may  sometimes  err,  but  elections  and  depend- 
ence will  bring  them  to  rights.  The  judiciary  branch  is  the 
instrument  which,  working  like  gravity,  without  intermission,  is 
to  press  us  at  last  into  one  consolidated  mass.  Against  this  I 
know  no  one  who,  equally  with  Judge  Roane  himself,  possesses 
the  power  and  the  courage  to  make  resistance  ;  and  to  him  1 
look,  and  have  long  looked,  as  our  strongest  bulwark.  If  Con- 
gress fails  to  shield  the  States  from  dangers  so  palpable  and  so 
imminent,  the  States  must  shield  themselves,  and  meet  the  in- 
vader foot  to  foot.  This  is  already  half  done  by  Colonel  Tay- 
lor's book  ;  because  a  conviction  that  we  are  right  accomplishes 
half  the  difficulty  of  correcting  wrong.  This  book  is  the  most 
effectual  retraction  of  our  government  to  its  original  principles 
whi  h  has  ever  yet  been  sent  by  heaven  to  our  aid.  Every 
State  in  the  Union  should  give  a  copy  to  every  member  they 
elect,  as  a  standing  instruction,  and  ours  should  set  the  example. 
Accept  with  Mrs.  Thweat  the  assurance  of  my  affectionate  and 
respectful  attachment. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoN'TicKLLO,  January  2'2,  1821. 

X  was  quite  rejoiced,  dear  Sir,  to  see  that  you  had  health  and 
spirits  enough  to  take  part  in  the  late  convention  of  your  State, 
for  revising  its  constitution,  and  to  bear  your  share  in  its  debates 
and  labors.  The  amendments  of  which  we  have  as  yet  heard, 
prove  the  advance  of  liberalism  in  the  intervening  period ;  and 


200  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

encourage  a  hope  that  the  human  mind  will  some  day  get  back 
to  the  freedom  it  enjoyed  two  thousand  years  ago.  This  coun- 
try, which  has  given  to  the  world  the  example  of  physical  liber- 
ty, owes  to  it  that  of  moral  emancipation  also,  for  as  yet  it  is  but 
nominal  with  us.  The  inquisition  of  public  opinion  overwhelms 
in  practice,  the  freedom  asserted  by  the  laws  in  theory. 

Our  anxieties  ia  this  quarter  are  all  concentrated  in  the  ques- 
tion, what  does  the  Holy  Alliance  in  and  out  of  Congress  mean 
to  do  with  us  on  the  Missouri  question  ?  And  this,  by-the-bye, 
is  but  the  name  of  the  case,  it  is  only  the  John  Doe  or  Richard 
Roe  of  the  ejectment.  The  real  question,  as  seen  in  the  States 
afflicted  with  this  unfortunate  population,  is,  are  our  slaves  to  be 
presented  with  freedom  and  a  dagger  ?  For  if  Congress  has  the 
power  to  regulate  the  conditions  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  States, 
within  the  States,  it  will  be  but  another  exercise  of  that  power, 
to  declare  that  all  shall  be  free.  Are  we  then  to  see  again  Athe- 
nian and  Lacedemonian  confederacies  ?  To  wage  another  Pelo- 
ponnesian  war  to  settle  the  ascendency  between  them  ?  Or  is 
this  the  tocsin  of  merely  a  servile  war  ?  That  remains  to  be 
seen ;  but  not,  I  hope,  by  you  or  me.  Surely,  they  will  parley 
awhile,  and  give  us  time  to  get  out  of  the  way.  What  a  Bed- 
lamite is  man  ?  But  let  us  turn  from  our  ov/n  uneasiness  to  the 
miseries  of  our  southern  friends.  Bolivar  and  Morillo,  it  seems, 
have  come  to  the  parley,  with  dispositions  at  length  to  stop  the 
useless  effusion  of  human  blood  in  that  quarter.  I  feared  from 
the  beginning,  that  these  people  were  not  yet  sufficiently  enlight- 
ened for  self-government ;  and  that  after  wading  through  blood 
and  slaughter,  they  would  end  in  military  tyrannies,  more  or  less 
numerous.  Yet  as  they  wished  to  try  the  experiment,  I  wished 
them  success  in  it ;  they  have  now  tried  it,  and  will  possibly  find 
that  their  safest  road  will  be  an  accommodation  with  the  mother 
country,  which  shall  hold  them  together  by  the  single  hnk  of 
the  same  chief  magistrate,  leaving  to  him  power  enough  to  keep 
them  in  peace  with  one  another,  and  to  themselves  the  essential 
power  of  self-government  and  self-improvement,  until  they  shall 
be  sufficiently  trained  by  education  and  habits  of  freedom,  to 


OORRESPOXDENOE.  201 

walk  safely  by  themselves.  Representative  government,  native 
functionaries,  a  qualified  negative  on  their  laws,  with  a  previous 
security  by  compact  for  freedom  of  commerce,  freedom  of  the 
press,  habeas  corpus  and  trial  by  jury,  would  make  a  good  be- 
ginning. This  last  would  be  the  school  in  which  their  people 
might  begin  to  learn  the  exercise  of  civic  duties  as  well  as  rights. 
For  freedom  of  religion  they  are  not  yet  prepared.  The  scales 
of  bigotry  have  not  sufficiently  fallen  from  their  eyes,  to  accept 
it  for  themselves  individually,  much  less  to  trust  others  with  it. 
But  that  will  come  in  time,  as  well  as  a  general  ripeness  to  break 
entirely  from  the  parent  stem.  You  see,  my  dear  Sir,  how 
easily  we  prescribe  for  others  a  cure  for  their  difficulties,  while 
we  cannot  cure  our  own.  We  must  leave  both,  I  believe,  to 
heaven,  and  wrap  ourselves  up  in  the  mantle  of  resignation,  and 
of  that  friendship  of  which  I  tender  to  you  the  most  sincere  as- 
surances. V 


TO    JOSEPH    C.    CABELL. 

M(;m[ckllo,  January  31,  1821. 

Deab  Sie, — Your  favors  of  the  18th  and  25th  came  together, 
three  days  ago.  They  fill  me  with  gloom  as  to  the  dispositions 
of  our  legislature  towards  the  University.  I  perceive  that  I  am 
not  to  live  to  see  it  opened.  As  to  what  had  better  be  done 
within  the  limits  of  their  will,  I  trust  with  entire  confidence  to 
what  yourself,  Gen.  Breckenridge  and  Mr.  Johnson  shall  think 
best.  You  will  see  what  is  practicable,  and  give  it  such  shape 
as  you  think  best.  If  a  loan  is  to  be  resorted  to,  I  think  sixty 
thousand  dollars  will  be  necessary,  including  the  library.  Its  in- 
stalments cannot  begin  until  those  of  the  former  loan  are  accom- 
plished ;  and  they  should  not  begin  later,  nor  be  less  than  thir- 
teen thousand  dollars  a  year.  (I  think  it  safe  to  retain  two  thon- 
oand  dollars  a  year  for  care  of  the  buildings,  improvement  of 
the  grounds,  and  unavoidable  contingencies.)  To  extingmsh 
this  second  loan,  will  require  between  five  and  six  instalments, 
which  will  carry  us  to  the  end  of  1833,  or  thirteen  years  from 


202  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

this  time.  My  individual  opinion  is,  that  we  had  better  not  open 
the  institution  until  the  buildings,  library,  and  all,  are  finished, 
and  our  funds  cleared  of  incumbrance.  These  buildings  oncts 
erected,  will  secure  the  full  object  infallibly  at  the  end  of  thirteen 
years,  and  as  much  earlier  as  the  legislature  shall  choose.  And 
if  we  were  to  begin  sooner,  with  half  funds  only,  it  would  satisfy 
the  common  mind,  prevent  their  aid  beyond  that  point,  and  our 
institution  remaining  at  that  forever,  would  be  no  more  than  the 
paltry  academies  we  now  have.  Even  with  the  whole  funds  we 
shall  be  reduced  to  six  professors.  Whjle  Harvard  will  still  prime 
it  over  us  with  her  twenty  professors.  How  many  of  our  youths 
she  now  has,  learning  the  lessons  of  anti-Missourianism,  I  know 
not ;  but  a  gentleman  lately  from  Princeton,  told  me  he  saw  there 
the  list  of  the  students  at  that  place,  and  that  more  than  half 
were  Virginians.  These  will  return  home,  no  doubt,  deeply  im- 
pressed with  the  sacred  principles  of  our  Holy  Alliance  of  re- 
strictionists. 

But  the  gloomiest  of  all  prospects,  is  in  the  desertion  of  the 
best  friends  of  the  institution,  for  desertion  I  must  call  it.  I 
know  not  the  necessities  which  may  force  this  on  you.  General 
Cocke,  you  say,  will  explain  them  to  me ;  but  I  cannot  conceive 
them,  nor  persuade  myself  they  are  uncontrollable.  I  have  ever 
hoped,  that  yourself,  Gen.  Breckenridge  and  Mr.  Johnson  would 
stand  at  your  posts  in  the  legislature,  until  everything  was  effect- 
ed, and  the  institution  opened.  If  it  is  so  difficult  to  get  along 
with  all  the  energy  and  influence  of  our  present  colleagues  in  the 
legislature,  how  can  we  expect  to  proceed  at  all,  reducing  our 
moving  power?  I  know  well  your  devotion  to  your  country, 
and  your  foresight  of  the  awful  scenes  coming  on  her,  sooner  or 
later.  With  this  foresight,  what  service  can  we  ever  render  her 
equal  to  this  ?  What  object  of  our  lives  can  we  propose  so  im- 
portant ?  What  interest  of  our  own  which  ought  not  to  be  post- 
poned to  this?  Health,  time,  labor,  on  what  in  the  single  life 
which  nature  has  given  us,  can  these  be  better  bestowed  than  on 
this  immortal  boon  to  our  country  ?  The  exertions  and  the  mor- 
tifications are  temporary ;  the  benefit  eternal.    If  any  member  of 


CORRESPONDENCE.  203 

our  college  of  visitors  could  justifiably  withdraw  from  this  sacred 
duty,  it  would  be  myself,  who,  quadragenis  stipendiis  jamdu- 
dum  peractis,  have  neither  vigor  of  body  nor  mind  left  to  keep 
the  field ;  but  I  will  die  in  the  last  ditch,  and  so  I  hope  you  will, 
my  friend,  as  well  as  our  firm-breasted  brothers  and  colleagues, 
Mr.  Johnson  and  Gen.  Breckenridge.  Nature  will  not  give  you 
a  second  life  wherein  to  atone  for  the  omissions  of  this.  Pray 
then,  dear  and  very  dear  Sir,  do  not  think  of  deserting  us,  but 
view  the  sacrifices  which  seem  to  stand  in  your  way,  as  the  lesser 
duties,  and  such  as  ought  to  be  postponed  to  this,  the  greatest  of 
all  Continue  with  us  in  these  holy  labors,  until  having  seen 
their  accomplishment,  we  may  say  with  old  Simeon,  "  nunc  di- 
mittas,  Domine."  Under  all  circumstances,  however,  of  praise 
or  blame,  I  shall  be  aflectionately  yours. 


TO    JARED    MANSFIELD,    ESQ. 

MoNTiCELLo,  February  13,  1821. 

I  am  favored.  Sir,  with  your  letter  of  January  26th,  and  am 
duly  sensible  of  the  honor  proposed  of  giving  to  my  portrait  a 
place  among  the  benefactors  of  our  nation,  and  of  the  establish- 
ment of  West  Point  in  particular.  I  have  ever  considered  that 
establishment  as  of  major  importance  to  our  country,  and  in 
whatever  I  could  do  for  it,  I  viewed  myself  as  performing  a  duty 
only.  This  is  certainly  more  than  requited  by  the  kind  senti- 
ments expressed  in  your  letter.  The  real  debt  of  the  institution 
is  to  its  able  and  zealous  professors.  Mr.  Sully,  I  fear,  however, 
will  consider  the  trouble  of  his  journey,  and  the  employment  of 
his  fine  pencil,  as  illy  bestowed  on  an  ottamy  of  78.  Voltaire, 
when  requested  by  a  female  friend  to  sit  for  his  bust  by  the 
sculptor  Pigalle,  answered,  "  J'ai  soixante  seize  ans ;  et  M.  Pigalle 
doit,  dit-on  venir  modeler  mon  visage.  Mais,  Madame,  il  fau- 
drait  que  j'eusse  un  visage.  On  n'en  devinerait  a  peine  la  place 
mes  yeux  sont  enfonces  de  trois  pouces ;  mes  joues  sent  de  vieux 
parchemin  mal  coUes  sur  des  os  qui  ne  tiennent  a  rien.     Le  pcLi 


204  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

de  dents  que  j'avais  est  parti."  I  will  conclude,  however,  with 
him,  that  what  remains  is  at  your  service,  and  that  of  the  pencil 
of  Mr.  Sully.  I  shall  be  at  home  till  the  middle  of  April,  when 
I  shall  go  for  some  time  to  an  occasional  and  distant  residence. 
Within  this  term  Mr.  Sully  will  be  pleased  to  consult  his  own 
convenience,  in  which  the  state  of  the  roads  will  of  course  have 
great  weight.     Every  day  of  it  will  be  equal  with  me. 

I  pray  you.  Sir,  to  convey  to  the  brethren  of  your  institution, 
and  to  accept  for  yourself  also,  the  assurance  of  my  high  con- 
sideration and  regard. 


TO    GENERAL    BRECKENRIDGE. 

MoNiCELLO,  February  15,  1821. 

Deah  Sir, — I  learn,  with  deep  affliction,  that  nothing  is  likely 
to  be  done  for  our  University  this  year.  So  near  as  it  is  to  the 
shore  that  one  shove  more  would  land  it  there,  I  had  hoped  that 
would  be  given  ;  and  that  we  should  open  with  the  next  year  an 
institution  on  which  the  fortunes  of  our  country  may  depend  more 
than  may  meet  the  general  eye.  The  reflections  that  the  boys 
of  this  age  are  to  be  the  men  of  the  next ;  that  they  should  be 
prepared  to  receive  the  holy  charge  which  we  are  cherishing  to 
deliver  over  to  them  ;  that  in  establishing  an  institution  of  wis- 
dom for  them,  we  secure  it  to  all  our  future  generations  ;  that  in 
fulfilling  this  duty,  we  bring  home  to  our  OAvn  bosoms  the  sweet 
consolation  of  seeing  our  sons  rising  under  a  luminous  tuition, 
to  destinies  of  high  promise  ;  these  are  considerations  which  will 
occur  to  all ;  but  all,  I  fear,  do  not  see  the  speck  in  our  horizon 
which  is  to  burst  on  us  as  a  tornado,  sooner  or  later.  The  hne 
of  division  lately  marked  out  between  different  portions  of  our 
confederacy,  is  such  as  will  never,  I  fear,  be  obliterated,  and  we 
are  now  trusting  to  those  who  are  against  us  in  position  and  prin- 
ciple, to  fashion  to  their  own  form  the  minds  and  affections  of 
our  youth.  If,  as  has  been  estimated,  we  send  three  hundred 
thousand  dollars  a  year  to  the  northern  seminaries,  for  the  in- 


COREEi^PONDENOE.  205 

struction  of  our  own  sons,  then  we  must  have  there  five  hundred 
of  our  sons,  imbibing  opinions  and  principles  in  discord  with 
those  of  their  own  country.  This  canker  is  eating  on  the  vitak 
of  our  existence,  and  if  not  arrested  at  once,  will  be  beyond  re- 
medy.. We  are  now  certainly  fLirnishing  recruits  to  their  school. 
If  it  be  asked  what  are  we  to  do,  or  said  we  cannot  give  the  last 
lift  to  the  University  without  stopping  our  primary  schools,  and 
these  we  think  most  important ;  I  answer,  I  know  their  import- 
ance. Nobody  can  doubt  my  zeal  for  the  general  instruction 
of  the  people.  Who  first  started  that  idea  ?  I  may  surely  say, 
myself.  Turn  to  the  bill  in  the  revised  code,  which  I  drew  more 
than  forty  years  ago,  and  before  which  the  idea  of  a  plan  for  the 
education  of  the  people,  generally,  had  never  been  suggested  in 
this  State.  There  you  will  see  developed  the  first  rudiments  of 
the  whole  system  of  general  education  we  are  now  urging  and 
acting  on  ;  and  it  is  well  known  to  those  with  whom  I  have  acted 
on  this  subject,  that  I  never  have  proposed  a  sacrifice  of  the  pri- 
mary to  the  ultimate  grade  of  instruction.  Let  us  keep  our  eye 
steadily  on  the  whole  system.  If  we  cannot  do  everything  at 
once,  let  us  do  one  at  a  time.  The  primary  schools  need  no  pre- 
liminary expense  ;  the  ultimate  grade  requires  a  considerable  ex- 
penditure in  advance.  A  suspension  of  proceeding  for  a  year  or 
two  on  the  primary  schools,  and  an  application  of  the  whole  in- 
come, during  that  time,  to  the  completion  of  the  buildings  neces- 
sary for  the  University,  would  enable  us  then  to  start  both  institu- 
tions at  the  same  time.  The  intermediate  branch,  of  colleges, 
academies  and  private  classical  schools,  for  the  middle  grade,  may 
hereafter  receive  any  necessary  aids  when  the  funds  shall  become 
competent.  In  the  meantime,  they  are  going  on  sufficiently,  as 
they  have  ever  yet  gone  on,  at  the  private  expense  of  those  who 
use  them,  and  who  in  numbers  and  means  are  competent  to  their 
own  exigencies.  The  experience  of  three  years  has,  I  presume, 
left  no  doubt  that  the  present  plan  of  primary  schools,  of  putting 
money  into  the  hands  of  twelve  hundred  persons  acting  for  no- 
thing, and  under  no  responsibility,  is  entirely  inefiicient.  Some 
other  must  be  thought  of;  and  during  this  pause,  if  it  be  only  for 


206  JEFFERSOK'S    WORKS. 

a  year,  the  whole  revenue  of  that  year,  with  that  of  the  last  three 
years  which  has  not  been  already  thrown  away,  would  place  our 
University  in  readiness  to  start  with  a  better  organization  of  pri- 
mary schools,  and  both  may  then  go  on,  hand  in  hand,  forever. 
No  diminution  of  the  capital  will  in  this  way  have  been  incurred ; 
a  principle  which  ought  to  be  deemed  sacred.  A  relinquishment 
of  interest  on  the  late  loan  of  sixty  thousand  dollars,  would  so  far, 
also,  forward  the  University  without  lessening  the  capital. 

But  what  may  be  best  done  I  leave  with  entire  confidence  to 
yourself  and  your  colleagues  in  legislation,  who  know  better 
than  I  do  the  conditions  of  the  literary  fund  and  its  wisest  ap- 
plication ;  and  I  shall  acquiesce  with  perfect  resignation  to  theii 
will.  I  have  brooded,  perhaps  with  fondness,  over  this  estab- 
lishment, as  it  held  up  to  me  the  hope  of  continuing  to  be  useful 
while  I  continued  to  live.  I  had  believed  that  the  course  and  cir- 
cumstances of  my  life  had  placed  within  my  power  soigne  services 
favorable  to  the  outset  of  the  institution.  But  this  may  be  egot- 
ism ;  pardonable,  perhaps,  .when  I  express  a  consciousness  that 
my  colleagues  and  successors  will  do  as  well,  whatever  the  leg- 
islature shall  enable  them  to  do. 

I  have  thus,  my  dear  Sir,  opened  my  bosom,  with  all  its  anxi- 
eties, freely  to  you.  I  blame  nobody  for  seeing  things  in  a  differ- 
ent light.  I  am  sure  that  all  act  conscientiously,  and  that  all  will 
be  done  honestly  and  wisely  which  can  be  done.  I  yield  the 
concerns  of  the  world  with  cheerfuhiess  to  those  who  are  ap- 
pointed in  the  order  of  nature  to  succeed  to  them  ;  and  for  your-* 
self,  for  our  colleagues,  and  for  all  in  charge  of  our  country's  fu- 
ture fame  and  fortune,  I  otfer  up  sincere  prayers. 


TO    DABNEY    TERRELL,   ESQ,. 

MoNTiOKLi.o,  February  26,  18-21. 

Dear  Sir, — While  you  were  in  this  neighborhood,  you  men- 
tioned to  me  your  intention  of  studying  the  law,  and  asked  my 
opinion  as  to  the  sufficient  course  of  reading.     I  gave  it  to  you, 


CORRESPOjSTDEKOE.  207 

ore  tenns,  and  with  so  little  consideration  that  I  do  not  remem- 
ber what  it  was  ;  but  I  have  since  recollected  that  I  once  wrote 
a  letter  to  Dr.  Cooper,*  on  good  consideration  of  the  subject.  He 
was  then  law-lecturer,  I  believe,  at  Carlisle.  My  stiffening  wrist 
makes  writing  now  a  slow  and  painful  operation,  but  my  grand- 
daughter Ellen  undertakes  to  copy  the  letter,  which  I  shall  en- 
close herein. 

I  notice  in  that  letter  four  distinct  epochs  at  which  the  English 
laws  have  been  reviewed,  and  their  whole  body,  as  existing  at 
each  epoch,  well  digested  into  a  code.  These  digests  were  by 
Bracton,  Coke,  Matthew  Bacon  and  Blackstone.  Bracton  having 
written  about  the  commencement  of  the  extant  statutes,  may  be 
considered  as  having  given  a  digest  of  the  laws  then  in  being, 
written  and  unwritten,  and  forming,  therefore,  the  textual  code  of 
what  is  called  the  common  law,  just  at  the  period  too  when  it 
begins  to  be  altered  by  statutes  to  which  we  can  appeal.  But  so 
much  of  his  matter  is  become  obsolete  by  change  of  circum- 
stances or  altered  by  statute,  that  the  student  may  omit  him  for 
the  present,  and 

1st.  Begin  with  fCoke's  four  Institutes.  These  give  a  com- 
plete body  of  the  law  as  it  stood  in  the  reign  of  the  first  James, 
an  epoch  the  more  interesting  to  us,  as  we  separated  at  that  point 
from  English  legislation,  and  acknowledge  no  subse.;iuent  stat- 
utary  alterations. 

*  January  16,  1814 

f  Since  the  date  of  this  letter,  a  most  important  and  valuable  edition  has  been 
pi;blislied  of  CokeV  First  Institute.  The  editor,  Thomas,  has  analyzed  the  -whole 
work,  and  re-eomposed  its  matter  in  the  order  of  Blackstone's  Commentaries,  not 
omitting  a  sentence  of  Lord  Coke's  text,  nor  inserting  one  not  his.  In  notes,  un- 
der the  text,  he  has  given  the  modern  decisions  relating  to  the  same  subjects, 
rendering  it  thus  as  methodical,  lucid,  easy  and  agreeable  to  the  reader  as  Blaok- 
Btoue,  and  more  precise  and  profound.  It  can  now  be  no  longer  doubted  that 
this  is  the  very  best  elementary  work  for  a  beginner  in  the  study  of  the  law.  It 
is  not,  I  suppose,  to  be  had  in  this  State,  and  questionable  if  in  the  North,  as  yet, 
and  it  is  dear,  costing  iu  England  four  guineas  or  nineteen  dollars,  to  whieh  add 
the  duty  here  on  imported  books,  which,  on  the  three  volumes  8vo,  is  something 
more  than  three  dollars,  or  one  dollar  the  8to  volume.  This  is  a  tax  on  learned 
readers  to  support  printers  for  the  readers  of  "  The  Delicate  Distress,  and  The 
Wild  Irish  Boy" 


208  JEFFERSON'S    WOKZS. 

2.  Then  passing  over  (for  occasional  reading  as  hereafter  pro- 
posed) all  the  reports  and  treatises  to  the  time  of  Matthew  Ba- 
con, read  his  abridgment,  compiled  about  one  hundred  years  after 
Coke's,  in  which  they  are  all  embodied.  This  gives  numerous 
applications  of  the  old  principles  to  new  cases,  and  gives  the  gen- 
eral state  of  the  English  law  at  that  period. 

Here,  too,  the  student  should  take  up  the  chancery  branch  of 
the  law,  by  reading  the  first  and  second  abridgments  of  the  cases 
in  Equity.  The  second  is  by  the  same  Matthew  Bacon,  the  first 
having  been  published  some  time  before.  The  alphabetical  order 
adopted  by  Bacon,  is  certainly  not  as  satisfactory  as  the  system- 
atic. But  the  arrangement  is  under  very  general  and  leading 
heads,  and  these,  indeed,  with  very  little  difficulty,  might  be  sys- 
tematically instead  of  alphabetically  arranged  and  read. 

3.  Passing  now  in  like  manner  over  all  intervening  reports 
and  tracts,  the  student  may  take  up  Blackstone's  Commentaries, 
published  about  twenty-five  years  later  than  Bacon's  abridgment, 
and  giving  the  substance  of  these  new  reports  and  tracts.  This 
review  is  not  so  full  as  that  of  Bacon,  by  any  means,  but  better 
digested.  Here,  too,  Woodeson  should  be  read  as  supplementary 
to  Blackstone,  under  heads  too  shortly  treated  by  him.  Fou- 
blanque's  edition  of  Francis'  Maxims  of  Equity,  and  Bridgman's 
digested  Index,  into  which  the  latter  cases  are  incorporated,  are 
also  sujjplementary  in  the  chancery  branch,  in  which  Blackstone 
is  very  short. 

This  course  comprehends  about  twenty-six  8vo  volumes,  and 
reading  four  or  five  hours  a  day  would  employ  about  two  years. 

After  these,  the  best  of  the  reporters  since  Blackstone  should 
be  read  for  the  new  cases  which  have  occurred  since  his  time. 
Which  they  are  I  know  not,  as  all  of  them  are  since  my  time. 

By  way  of  change  and  relief  for  another  hour  or  two  in  the 
day,  should  be  read  the  law-tracts  of  merit  which  are  many,  and 
among  them  all  those  of  Baron  Gilbert  are  of  the  fii'st  order.  la 
these  hours,  too,  may  be  read  Bracton,  (now  translated,)  and  Jus- 
tinian's Institute.  The  method  of  these  two  last  works  is  very 
much  the  same,  and  their  language  often  quite  so.     Justinian  is 


CORRESPONDENCE.  209 

*ery  illustrative  of  the  doctrines  of  equity,  and  is  often  appealea 
lo,  and  Cooper's  edition  is  the  best  on  account  of  the  analogies  and 
contrasts  he  has  given  of  the  Roman  and  Enghsh  law.  Aftor 
Bracton,  Reeves'  History  of  the  English  Law  may  he  read  to  ad- 
vantage. During  this  same  hour  or  two  of  lighter  law  reading, 
select  and  leading  cases  of  the  reporters  may  be  successively 
read,  which  the  several  digests  will  have  pointed  out  and  re- 
ferred to. 

******* 

I  have  here  sketched  the  reading  in  common  law  and  chan- 
cery which  I  suppose  necessary  for  a  reputable  practitioner  in 
those  courts.  But  there  are  other  branches  of  law  in  which,  al- 
though it  is  not  expected  he  should  be  an  adept,  yet  when  it 
occurs  to  speak  of  them,  it  should  be  understandingly  to  a  decent 
degree.  There  are  the  Admiralty  law,  Ecclesiastical  law,  and  the 
Law  of  Nations.  I  would  name  as  elementary  books  in  these 
branches,  Molloy  de  Jure  Maritimo.  Brown's  Compend  of  the 
Civil  and  Admiralty  Law,  2  vols.  8vo.  The  Jura  Ecclesiastica, 
2  vols.  8vo.  And  Les  Institutions  du  droit  de  la  Nature  et  des 
Gens  de  Reyneval,  1  vol.  8vo. 

Besides  these  six  hours  of  law  reading,  light  and  heavy,  and 
those  necessary  for  the  repasts  of  the  day,  for  exercise  and  sleep, 
which  suppose  to  be  ten  or  twelve,  there  will  still  be  six  or  eight 
hours  for  reading  history,  politics,  ethics,  physics,  oratory,  poetry, 
criticism,  &c.,  as  necessary  as  law  to  form  an  accomplished 
lawyer. 

The  letter  to  Dr.  Cooper,  with  this  as  a  suppleriient,  will  give 
you  those  ideas  on  a  sufficient  course  of  law  reading  which  I 
ought  to  have  done  with  more  consideration  at  the  moment  of 
your  first  request.  Accept  them  now  as  a  testimony  of  my  es- 
teem, and  of  sincere  wishes  for  your  success  ;  and  the  family,  una 
voce,  desires  me  to  convey  theirs  with  my  own  affectionate  salu- 
tations. 

vol..  VII.  14 


210  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


TO    TIMOTHY    PICKERING,  ES^. 

MoxTiOKLLO,  February  27,  1821, 

I  have  received,  Sir,  your  favor  of  the  12th,  and  I  assure  you 
I  received  it  with  pleasure.  It  is  true,  as  you  say,  that  we  have 
differed  in  political  opinions ;  but  I  can  say  with  equal  truth,  that 
I  never  suffered  a  political  to  become  a  personal  difference.  I 
have  been  left  on  this  ground  by  some  friends  whom  I  dearly 
loved,  but  I  was  never  the  first  to  separate.  With  some  others, 
of  politics  different  from  mine,  I  have  continued  in  the  warmest 
friendship  to  this  day,  and  to  all,  and  to  yourself  particularly,  1 
have  ever  done  moral  justice. 

I  thank  you  for  Mr.  Channing's  discourse,  which  you  have 
been  so  kind  as  to  forward  me.  It  is  not  yet  at  hand,  but  is 
doubtless  on  its  way.  I  had  received  it  through  another  chan- 
nel, and  read  it  with  high  satisfaction.  No  one  sees  with  greater 
pleasure  than  myself  the  progress  of  reason,  in  its  advances  to- 
wards rational  Christianity.  When  we  shall  have  done  away  the 
incomprehensible  jargon  of  the  Trinitarian  arithmetic,  that  three 
are  one,  and  one  is  three ;  when  we  shall  have  knocked  down 
the  artificial  scaffolding,  reared  to  mask  from  view  the  simple 
structure  of  Jesus ;  when,  in  short,  we  shall  have  unlearned  every- 
thing which  has  been  taught  since  his  day,  and  got  back  to  the 
pure  and  simple  doctrines  he  inculcated,  we  shall  then  be  truly 
and  worthily  his  disciples;  and  my  opinion  is  that  if  nothing  had 
ever  been  added  to  what  flowed  purely  from  his  lips,  the  whole 
world  would  at  this  day  have  been  Christian.  I  know  that  the 
case  you  cite,  of  Dr.  Drake,  has  been  a  common  one.  The  re- 
ligion-builders have  so  distorted  and  deformed  the  doctrines  of 
Jesus,  so  muffled  them  in  mysticisms,  fancies  and  falsehoods 
have  caricatured  them  into  forms  so  monstrous  and  inconceivable, 
as  to  shock  reasonable  thinkers,  to  revolt  them  against  the  whole, 
and  drive  them  rashly  to  pronounee  its  founder  an  impostor. 
Had  there  never  been  a  commentator,  there  never  would  have 
been  an  infidel.  In  the  present  advance  of  truth,  which  we  both 
approve,  I  do  not  know  that  you  and  I  may  think  alike  on  jJI 


CORRESPONDENCE.  211 

points.  As  the  Creator  has  made  no  two  faces  alike,  so  no  two 
minds,  and  probably  no  two  creeds.  We  well  know  that  among 
Unitarians  themselves  there  are  strong  shades  of  difference,  as  be- 
tween Doctor<5  Price  and  Priestley,  for  example.  So  there  may 
be  peculiarities  in  your  creed  and  in  mine.  They  are  honestly 
formed  without  doubt.  I  do  not  wish  to  trouble  the  world  with 
mine,  nor  to  be  troubled  for  them.  These  accounts  are  to  be  set- 
tled only  with  him  who  made  us ;  and  to  him  we  leave  it,  with 
charity  for  all  others,  of  whom,  also,  he  is  the  only  rightful  and 
competent  judge.  I  have  little  doabt  that  the  whole  of  our  coun- 
try will  soon  be  rallied  to  the  unity  of  the  Creator,  and,  I  hope, 
to  the  piue  doctrines  of  Jesus  also. 

In  saying  to  you  so  much,  and  without  reserve,  on  a  subject 
on  which  I  never  permit  myself  to  go  before  the  public,  I  know 
that  I  am  safe  against  the  infidelities  which  have  so  often  be- 
trayed my  letters  to  the  strictures  of  those  for  whom  they  were 
not  written,  and  to  whom  I  never  meant  to  commit  my  peace. 
To  yourself  I  wish  every  happiness,  and  will  conclude,  as  you 
have  done,  in  the  same  simple  style  of  antiquity,  da  operam  ut 
valeas  ;  hoc  mihi  gratius  facere  nihil  potes. 


TO    JUDGE    ROANE. 

HoNTicELLo,  Mnrc-h  9,  1821. 

Dear  Sir, — I  am  indebted  for  your  favor  of  February  25th, 
and  especially  for  your  friendly  indulgence  to  my  excuses  for  re- 
tiring from  the  polemical  world.  I  should  not  shrink  from  the 
post  of  duty,  had  not  the  decays  of  nature  withdrawn  me  from 
the  list  of  combatants.  Great  decline  in  the  energies  of  the  body 
import  naturally  a  corresponding  wane  of  the  mind,  and  a  long- 
ing after  tranquillity  as  the  last  and  sweetest  asylum  of  age.  It 
is  a  law  of  nature  that  the  generations  of  men  should  give  way, 
one  to  another,  and  I  hope  that  the  one  now  on  the  stage  will 
preserve  for  their  sons  the  political  blessings  delivered  into  their 
hands  by  their  fathers.  Time  indeed  changes  manners  and  no- 
tions, and  so  far  we  must  expect  institutions  to  bend  to  them. 


212  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

But  tiire  produces  also  coiTuption  of  principles,  and  against  this 
it  is  the  duty  of  good  citizens  to  be  ever  on  the  watch,  and  if  the 
gangrene  is  to  prevail  at  last,  let  the  day  be  kept  off  as  long  as 
possible.  We  see  already  germs  of  this,  as  might  be  expected. 
But  we  are  not  the  less  bound  to  press  against  them.  The  mul- 
tiplication of  public  offices,  increase  of  expense  beyond  income, 
growth  and  entailment, of  a  public  debt,  are  indications  soliciting 
the  employment  of  the  pruning-knife  ;  and  I  doubt  not  it  will  be 
employed ;  good  principles  being  as  yet  prevalent  enough  for 
that. 

The  great  object  of  my  fear  is  the  federal  judiciary.  That 
body,  like  gravity,  ever  acting,  with  noiseless  foot,  and  unalarm- 
ing  advance,  gaining  ground  step  by  step,  and  holding  what  it 
gains,  is  ingulphing  insidiously  the  special  governments  into  the 
jaws  of  that  which  feeds  them.  The  recent  recall  to  first  prin- 
ciples, however,  by  Colonel  Taylor,  by  yourself,  and  now  by 
Alexander  Smith,  will,  I  hope,  be  heard  and  obeyed,  and  that  a 
temporary  cheek  will  be  effected.  Yet  be  not  weary  of  well 
doing.     Let  the  eye  of  vigilance  never  be  closed. 

Last  and  most  portentous  of  all  is  the  Missouri  question.  It  is 
smeared  over  for  the  present ;  but  its  geographical  demarcation  is 
indelible.  What  it  is  to  become,  I  see  not ;  and  leave  to  those 
who  will  live  to  see  it.  The  University  will  give  employment 
to  my  remaining  years,  and  quite  enough  for  my  senile  faculties. 
It  is  the  last  act  of  usefulness  I  can  render,  and  could  I  see  it 
open  I  would  not  ask  an  hour  more  of  life.  To  you  I  hope 
many  will  still  be  given ;  and,  certain  they  will  all  be  employed 
for  the  good  of  our  beloved  country,  I  salute  you  with  sentiments 
of  especial  friendship  and  respect. 


TO    JUDGE    ROANE, 

MoNTiOELLo.  June  27,  1821. 
Deab  Sir, — I  have  received  through  the  hands  of  the  Gover- 
aor,  Colonel  Taylor's  letter  to  you.     It  is  with  extreme  reluctance 


CORRESPONDENCE.  213 

that  I  permit  myself  to  usurp  the  office  of  an  adviser  of  tlie  pub- 
lic, what  books  they  should  read,  and  what  not.  I  yield,  how- 
ever, on  this  occasion  to  your  wish  and  that  of  Colonel  Taylor, 
and  do  what  (with  a  single  exception  only)  I  never  did  before, 
on  the  many  similar  applications  made  to  me.  On  reviewiiig 
my  letters  to  Colonel  Taylor  and  to  Mr.  Thweatt,  neither  ap- 
peared exactly  proper.  Each  contained  matter  which  might  give 
offence  to  the  judges,  without  adding  strength  to  the  opinion.  I 
have,  therefore,  out  of  the  two,  cooked  up  what  may  be  called 
"an  extract  of  a  letter  from  Th:  J.  to ;"  but  without  say- 
ing it  is  published  with  my  consent.  That  would  forever  deprive 
me  of  the  ground  of  declining  the  office  of  a  Reviewer  of  books 
in  future  cases.  I  sincerely  wish  the  attention  of  the  public  may 
be  drawn  to  the  doctrines  of  the  book  ;  and  if  this  self-styled 
-extract  may  contribute  to  it,  I  shall  be  gratified.  I  salute  you 
with  constant  friendship  and  respect. 


EXTEACT  OF  A  LETTER  EROM  TH:  JEFFERSON  TO 


I  have  read  Colonel  Taylor's  book  of  "  Constructions  Con- 
strued," with  great  satisfaction,  and,  I  will  say,  with  edification  ; 
for  I  acknowledge  it  corrected  some  errors  of  opinion  into  which 
I  had  slidden  without  sufficient  examination.  It  is  Ihe  most 
logical  retraction  of  our  governments  to  the  original  and  true 
principles  of  the  constitution  creating  them,  which  has  appeared 
since  the  adoption  of  that  instrument.  I  may  not  perhaps  concur 
in  all  its  opinions,  great  and  small ;  for  no  two  men  ever  thought 
alike  on  so  many  points.  But  on  all  its  important  questions,  it 
contains  the  true  political  faith,  to  which  every  catholic  repub- 
lican should  steadfastly  hold.  It  should  be  put  into  the  hands 
of  all  our  functionaries,  authoritatively,  as  a  standing  instruction, 
and  true  exposition  of  our  Constitution,  as  understood  at  the  time 
we  agreed  to  it.  It  is  a  fatal  heresy  to  suppose  that  either  our 
State  governments  are  superior  to  the  federal,  or  the  federal  to 
the  States.  The  people,  to  whom  all  authority  belongs,  have 
divided  the  powers  of  government  into  two  distinct  departments, 
the  leading  characters  of  which  are  foreign  and  domestic ;  and 


214  JEFFERSON'S    "WOEKS. 

they  l.a\t  appointed  for  each  a  distinct  set  of  fanctiouaries 
These  they  have  made  co-ordinate,  checking  and  balancing  each 
other,  hke  the  three  cardinal  departments  in  the  individual 
States:  each  equally  supreme  as  to  the  powers  delegated  to  it- 
self, and  neither  authorized  ultimately  to  decide  what  belongs  to 
itself,  or  to  its  coparcenor  in  government.  As  independent,  in 
tact,  as  different  nations,  a  spirit  of  forbearance  and  compromi.°e, 
therefore,  and  not  of  encroachment  and  usurpation,  is  the  healing 
balm  of  such  a  constitution  ;  and  each  party  should  prudently 
shrink  from  all  approach  to  the  line  of  demarcation,  instead  of 
rashly  overleaping  it,  or  throwing  grapples  ahead  to  haul  to  here- 
after. Bat,  finally,  the  peculiar  happiness  of  our  blessed  system 
is,  that  in  differences  of  opinion  between  these  different  sets  of 
servants,  the  appeal  is  to  neither,  but  to  their  employers  peace- 
ably assembled  by  their  representatives  in  Convention.  This  is 
more  rational  than  the  jus  fortioris,  or  the  cannon's  mouth,  the 
ultima  et  sola  ratio  regum. 


TO    GENERAL    DEAKBORNE. 

iloiNTiuKi.Lo,  Atigast  It,  1821, 

Dear  Sir, — Your  favor  of  the  8th  came  to  hand  yesterday 
evening.  I  hope  you  will  never  suppose  yom'  letters  to  be  among 
those  which  are  troublesome  to  me.  They  are  always  welcome, 
and  it  is  among  my  great  comforts  to  hear  from  my  ancient  col- 
leagues, and  to  know  that  they  are  well.  The  affectionate  recol- 
lection of  Mrs.  Dearborne,  cherished  by  our  family,  will  ever 
render  her  health  and  happiness  interesting  to  them.  You  are 
so  far  asteru  of  Mr.  Adams  and  myself,  that  you  must  not  yet  talk 
of  old  age.  1  am  happy  to  hear  of  his  good  health.  I  think  he 
will  outlive  us  all,  I  mean  the  Declaration-men,  although  our 
senior  siuce  the  death  of  Colonel  Floyd.  It  is  a  race  in  which  I 
have  no  ambition  to  win.  Man,  like  the  fruit  he  eats,  has  his 
period  of  ripeness.  Like  that,  too,  if  he  continues  longer  hang- 
ing to  the  stem,  it  is  but  au  useless  and  unsightly  appendage,     i 


CORRESPONDENCE.  215 

rejoice  with  you  that  the  State  of  Missouri  is  at  length  a  membt-i 
of  our  Union.  Whether  the  question  it  excited  is  dead,  or  only 
sleepeth,  I  do  not  know.  I  see  only  that  it  has  given  resurrec- 
tion to  the  Hartford  convention  men.  They  have  had  the  ad- 
dress, by  playing  on  the  honest  feelings  of  our  former  friends,  to 
seduce  them  from  their  kindred  spirits,  and  to  borrow  their  weight 
into  the  federal  scale.  Desperate  of  regaining  power  under  po- 
litical distinctions,  they  have  adroitly  wriggled  into  its  seat  under 
the  auspices  of  morality,  and  are  again  in  the  ascendency  from 
which  their  sins  had  hurled  them.  It  is  indeed  of  little  con- 
sequence who  governs  us,  if  they  sincerely  and  zealously  cherish 
the  principles  of  union  and  republicanism. 

I  still  believe  that  the  Western  extension  of  our  confederacy 
will  ensure  its  duration,  by  overruling  local  factions,  which  might 
shake  a  smaller  association.  But  whatever  may  be  the  merit  or 
demerit  of  that  acquisition,  I  divide  it  with  my  colleagues,  to 
whose  councils  1  was  indebted  for  a  course  of  administration 
which,  notwithstanding  this  late  coalition  of  clay  and  brass,  will, 
I  hope,  continue  to  receive  the  approbation  of  our  country. 

The  portrait  by  Stewart  was  received  in  due  time  and  good 
order,  and  claims,  for  this  difficult  acquisition,  the  thanks  of  the 
family,  who  join  me  in  affectionate  souvenirs  of  Mrs.  Dearborne 
and  yourself.  My  particular  salutations  to  both  flow,  as  ever, 
from  the  heart,  continual  and  warm. 


TO    MR.    C.     HAMMOND. 

Mu.N'iicKj.ut,  August  18,  1821. 

SiK, — Your  favor  of  the  7th  is  just  now  received.  The  letter 
to  which  it  refers  was  written  by  me  with  the  sole  view  of  rec- 
ommending to  the  study  of  my  fellow  citizens  a  book  which  I 
considered  as  containing  more  genuine  doctrines  on  the  subject 
of  our  government,  and  carrying  us  back  more  truly  to  its  funda- 
mental principles,  than  any  one  which  had  been  written  since  the 
adoption  of  our  constitution.    As  confined  to  this  object.  I  thought, 


216  JEFFERSON'S    "WOEEIS. 

and  still  think,  its  language  as  plain  and  intelligible  as  I  can  make 
it.  But  when  we  see  inspired  writings  made  to  speak  whatever 
opposite  controversialists  wish  them  to  say,  we  cannot  ourselves 
expect  to  find  language  incapable  of  similar  distortion.  My  ex- 
pressions were  general ;  their  perversion  is  in  their  misapplication 
to  a  particular  case.  To  test  them  truly,  they  should  turn  to  the 
book  with  whose  opinion  they  profess  to  coincide.  If  the  book 
establishes  that  a  State  has  no  right  to  tax  the  monied  property 
within  its  limits,  or  that  it  can  be  called,  as  a  party,  to  the  bar 
of  the  federal  judiciary,  then  they  may  infer  that  -these  are  my 
Dpinions.  If  no  such  doctrines  are  there,  my  letter  does  not  au- 
thorize their  imputation  to  me. 

It  has  long,  however,  been  my  opinion,  and  I  have  never 
shrunk  from  its  expression,  (although  I  do  not  choose  to  put  it 
into  a  newspaper,  nor,  like  a  Priam  in  armor,  offer  myself  its 
champion,)  that  the  germ  of  dissolution  of  our  federal  govern- 
ment is  in  the  constitution  of  the  federal  judiciary;  an  irresponsi- 
ble body,  (for  impeachment  is  scarcely  a  scare-crow,)  working 
like  gravity  by  night  and  by  day,  gaining  a  little  to-day  and  a 
little  to-morrow,  and  advancing  its  noiseless  step  like  a  thief, 
over  the  field  of  jurisdiction,  until  all  shall  be  usurped  from  the 
States,  and  the  government  of  all  be  consolidated  into  one.  To 
this  I  am  opposed  ;  because,  when  all  government,  domestic  and 
foreign,  in  little  as  in  great  things,  shall  be  drawn  to  Washing- 
ton as  the  centre  of  ail  power,  it  will  render  powerless  the  checks 
provided  of  one  government  on  another,  and  will  become  as 
venal  and  oppressive  as  the  government  from  which  we  separat- 
ed. It  will  be  as  in  Europe,  where  every  man  must  be  eithei 
pike  or  gudgeon,  hammer  or  anvil.  Our  functionaries  and  theirs 
are  wares  from  the  same  work-shop  ;  made  of  the  same  materials, 
and  by  the  same  hand.  If  the  States  look  with  apathy  on  this 
silent  descent  of  their  government  into  the  gulf/  which  is  to 
swallow  all,  we  have  only  to  weep  over  the  human  character 
formed  uncoutrolable  but  by  a  rod  of  iron,  and  the  blasphemers 
of  man,  as  incapable  of  self-government,  become  his  true  histo- 
rians. 


COEPvESPONDENOE.  217 

But  let  me  beseech  yon,  Sir,  not  to  let  this  letter  get  into  a 
newspaper.  Tranquillity,  at  my  age,  is  the  supreme  good  of  life. 
I  think  it  a  duty,  and  it  is  my  earnest  wish,  to  take  no  further 
part  in  public  affairs ;  to  leave  them  to  the  existing  generation  to 
whose  turn  they  have  fallen,  and  to  resign  the  remains  of  a  de- 
caying body  and  mind  to  their  protection.  The  abuse  of  confi- 
dence by  publishing  my  letters  has  cost  me  more  than  all  other 
pains,  and  make  me  afraid  to  put  pen  to  paper  in  a  letter  of  sen- 
timent. If  I  have  done  it  frankly  in  answer  to  your  letter,  it  is 
in  full  trust  that  I  shall  not  be  thrown  by  you  into  the  arena  of 
a  newspaper.     I  salute  you  with  great  respect. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTicELLo,  September  12,  1821. 

Dear  Sir, — I  am  just  returned  from  my  other  home,  and  shall 
within  a  week  go  back  to  it  for  the  rest  of  the  autumn.  I  find 
here  your  favor  of  August  20th,  and  was  before  in  arrear  for  that 
of  May  19th.  I  cannot  answer,  but  join  in,  your  question  of  May 
19th.  Are  we  to  surrender  the  pleasing  hopes  of  seeing  improve- 
ment in  the  moral  and  intellectual  condition  of  man  ?  The 
events  of  Naples  and  Piedmont  cast  a  gloomy  cloud  over  that 
hope,  and  Spain  and  Portugal  are  not  beyond  jeopardy.  And 
what  are  we  to  think  of  this  northern  triumvirate,  arming  their 
nations  to  dictate  despotisms  to  the  rest  of  the  world  ?  And  the 
evident  connivance  of  England,  as  the  price  of  secret  stipulations 
for  contiqental  armies,  if  her  own  should  take  side  with  her  mal- 
content and  pulverized  people  ?  And  what  of  the  poor  Greeks, 
and  their  small  chance  of  amelioration  even  if  the  hypocritical 
Autocrat  should  take  them  under  the  iron  cover  of  his  Ukazes 
Would  this  be  lighter  or  safer  than  that  of  the  Turk  ?  These, 
my  dear  friend,  are  speculations  for  the  new  generation,  as, 
before  they  will  be  resolved,  you  and  I  must  join  our  deceased 
brother  Floyd.  Yet  I  will  not  believe  our  labors  are  lost,  i 
shall  not  die  without  a  hope  that  light  and  liberty  are  on  steady 


218  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

advance.  We  have  seen,  indeed,  once  within  the  records  of  his- 
tory, a  complete  eclipse  of  the  human  mind  continuing  for  centu- 
ries. And  this,  too,  by  swarms  of  the  same  northern  barbarians, 
conquering  and  taking  possession  of  the  countries  and  govern- 
ments of  the  civilized  world.  Should  this  be  again  attempted, 
should  the  same  northern  hordes,  allured  again  by  the  corn,  wine, 
and  oil  of  the  south,  be  able  again  to  settle  their  swarms  in  the 
countries  of  their  growth,  the  art  of  printing  alone,  and  the  vast 
dissemination  of  books,  will  maintain  the  mind  where  it  is,  and 
raise  the  conquering  ruffians  to  the  level  of  the  conquered,  in- 
stead of  degrading  these  to  that  of  their  conquerors.  And  even 
should  the  cloud  of  barbarism  and  despotism  again  obscure  the 
science  and  liberties  of  Europe,  this  country  remains  to  preserve 
and  restore  light  and  liberty  to  them.  In  short,  the  flames  kindled 
on  the  4th  of  July,  1776,  have  spread  over  too  much  of  the  globe 
to  be  extinguished  by  the  feeble  engines  of  despotism  ;  on  the  con- 
trary, they  will  consume  these  engines  and  all  who  work  them. 

I  think  with  you  that  there  should  be  a  school  of  instruction 
for  our  navy  as  well  as  artillery ;  and  I  do  not  see  why  the  same 
establishment  might  not  suffice  for  both.  Both  require  the  same 
basis  of  general  mathematics,  adding  projectiles  and  fortiiications 
for  the  artillery  exclusively,  and  astronomy  and  theory  of  naviga- 
tion exclusively  for  the  naval  students.  Berout  conducted  both 
schools  in  France,  and  has  left  us  the  best  book  extant  for  their 
joint  and  separate  instruction.  It  ought  not  to  require  a  sepa- 
rate professor. 

A  4th  of  July  oration  delivered  in  the  town  of  Milford,  in  your 
State,  gives  to  Samuel  Chase  the  credit  of  having  "  iirst  started 
the  cry  of  independence  in  the  ears  of  his  countrymen."  Do  you 
remember  anything  of  this  ?  I  do  not.  I  have  no  doubt  it  was 
uttered  in  Massachusetts  even  before  it  was  by  Thomas  Paine. 
But  certainly  I  never  considered  Samuel  Chase  as  foremost,  or 
even  forward  in  that  hallowed  cry.  I  know  that  Maryland  hung 
Vieavily  on  our  backs,  and  that  Chase,  although  first  named,  was 
not  most  in  unison  with  us  of  that  delegation,  either  in  politics 
or  morals,  d  c^est  ainsi  que  Von  ecrit  Vhistoire ! 


CORRESPONDENCE.  219 

Your  doubt  of  the  legilimacj'  of  the  word  gloriola,  is  resolved 
by  Cicero,  who,  in  his  letter  to  Lucceius  expresses  a  wish  "wi 
nos  inetipsi  vivi  gloriola  nostra  perfruamur.^^  Affectionately 
adieu. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFEHSON. 

Monti  ziLLu,  September  i'4,  1S21, 

Dear  Sik, — I  thank  you  for  your  favor  of  the  12th  instant. 
Hope  springs  eternal.  Eight  millions  of  Jews  hope  for  a  Messiah 
more  powerful  and  glorious  than  Moses,  David,  or  Solomon ; 
who  is  to  make  them  as  powerful  as  he  pleases.  Some  hundreds 
of  millions  of  Musslemen  expect  another  prophet  more  powerful 
than  Mahomet,  who  is  to  spread  Islamism  over  the  whole  earth. 
Hundreds  of  millions  of  Christians  expect  and  hope  for  a  millen- 
nium in  which  Jesus  is  to  reign  for  a  thousand  years  over  the 
whole  world  before  it  is  burnt  up.  The  Hindoos  expect  another 
and  final  incarnation  of  Vishnu,  who  is  to  do  great  and  wonder- 
ful things,  I  know  not  what.  All  these  hopes  are  founded  on 
real  or  pretended  revelation.  The  modern  Greeks,  too,  it  seems, 
hope  for  a  deliverer  who  is  to  produce  them — the  Themisto- 
cleses  and  Demostheneses — the  Platos  and  Aristotles — the  Solons 
and  Lycurguses.  On  what  prophecies  they  found  their  belief, 
1  know  not.  You  and  I  hope  for  splendid  improvements  in 
human  society,  and  vast  amelioration  in  the  condition  of  man- 
kind. Our  faith  may  be  supposed  by  more  rational  arguments 
than  any  of  the  former,  I  own  that  I  am  very  sanguine  in  the 
belief  of  them,  as  I  hope  and  believe  you  are,  and  your  reasoning 
in  your  letter  confirmed  me  in  them. 

As  Brother  Floyd  has  gone,  I  am  now  the  oldest  of  the  little 
Congressional  group  that  remain.  I  may  therefore  rationally 
hope  to  be  the  fii-st  to  depart ;  and  as  you  are  the  youngest  and 
most  energetic  in  mind  and  body,  you  may  therefore  rationally 
hope  to  be  the  last  to  take  your  flight,  and  to  rake  up  the  fire  as 
father  Sherman,  who  always  staid  to  the  last,  and  commonly 
two  days  afterwards,  used  to  say,  "  that  it  was  his  office  to  sit  up 


220  JEFFERSOK'S    WORKS. 

and  rake  the  ashes  over  the  coals."  And  much  satisfaction  ma3f 
you  have  in  your  ofRce. 

The  cholera  morbus  has  done  wonders  in  St.  Helena  and  in 
London.  We  shall  soon  hear  of  a  negotiation  for  a  second  wife. 
Whether  in  the  body,  or  out  of  the  body,  I  shall  always  be  your 
friend. 

The  anecdote  of  Mr.  Chase,  contained  in  the  oration  delivered 
at  Milford,  must  be  an  idle  rumor,  for  neither  the  State  of  Mary- 
land, nor  of  their  delegates,  were  very  early  in  their  conviction 
of  the  necessity  of  independence,  nor  very  forward  in  promoting 
it.  The  old  speaker  Tilghman,  Johnson,  Chase,  and  Paca,  were 
steady  in  promoting  resistance,  but  after  some  of  them,  Maryland 
sent  one,  at  least,  of  the  most  turbulent  Tories  that  ever  came  to 
Congress. 


TO    . 

MoNricKLLo,  September  28,  1821. 

Sir, — The  government  of  the  United  States,  at  a  very  early 
period,  when  establishing  its  tariff  on  foreign  importations,  were 
very  much  guided  in  their  selection  of  objects  by  a  desire  to  en- 
courage manufactures  within  ourselves.  Among  other  articles 
then  selected  were  books,  on  the  importation  of  which  a  duty  of 
fifteen  per  cent,  was  imposed,  which,  by  ordinary  custom  house 
charges,  amount  to  about  eighteen  per  cent.,  and  adding  the  im- 
porting booksellers  profit  on  this,  becomes  about  twenty-seven 
per  cent.  This  was  useful  at  first,  perhaps,  towards  exciting  our 
printers  to  make  a  beginning  in  that  business  here.  But  it  is 
fouad  in  experience  that  the  home  demand  is  not  sufficient  to 
justify  the  re-printing  any  but  the  most  popular  English  works, 
and  cheap  editions  of  a  few  of  the  classics  for  schools.  For  the 
editions  of  value,  enriched  by  notes,  commentaries,  &c.,  and  for 
books  in  foreign  living  languages,  the  demand  here  is  too  small 
and  sparse  to  reimburse  the  expense  of  re-printing  them.  None 
of  these,  therefore,  are  printed  here,  and  the  duty  on  them  be- 
comes consequently  not  a  protecting,  but  really  a  prohibitory^  one 


CORRESPONDENCE.  221 

It  makes  a  very  serious  addition  to  the  price  of  the  book,  and 
falls  chiefly  on  a  description  of  persons  little  able  to  meet  it. 
Students  who  are  destined  for  professional  callings,  as  most  of 
our  scholars  are,  are  barely  able  for  the  most  part  to  meet  the  ex- 
penses of  tuition.  The  addition  of  eighteen  or  twenty-seven  per 
cent,  on  the  books  necessary  for  their  instruction,  amounts  often 
to  a  prohibition  as  to  them.  For  want  of  these  aids,  which  are 
open  to  the  students  of  all  other  nations  but  our  own,  they  enter 
on  their  course  on  a  very  unequal  footing  with  those  of  the  same 
professions  in  foreign  countries,  and  our  citizens  at  large,  too, 
who  employ  them,  do  not  derive  from  that  employment  all  the 
benefit  which  higher  qualifiations  would  give  them.  It  is  true 
that  no  duty  is  required  on  books  imported  for  seminaries  o. 
learning,  but  these,  locked  up  in  libraries,  can  be  of  no  avail  to 
the  practical  man  when  he  wishes  a  recm-rence  to  them  for  the 
uses  of  life.  Of  many  important  books  of  reference  there  is  not 
perhaps  a  single  copy  in  the  United  States  ;  of  others  but  a  few, 
and  these  too  distant  often  to  be  accessible  to  scholars  generally. 
It  is  believed,  therefore,  that  if  the  attention  of  Congress  could 
be  drawn  to  this  article,  they  would,  in  their  wisdom,  see  its  im- 
policy. Science  is  more  important  in  a  republican  than  in  any 
other  government.  And  in  an  infant  country  like  ours,  we  must 
much  depend  for  improvement  on  the  science  of  other  countries, 
longer  established,  possessing  better  means,  and  more  advanced 
than  we  are.  To  prohibit  us  from  the  benefit  of  foreign  light, 
is  to  consign  us  to  long  darkness. 

The  northern  seminaries  following  with  parental  solicitude  the 
interests  of  their  eleves  in  the  course  for  which  they  have  pre- 
pared them,  propose  to  petition  Congress  on  this  subject,  and 
wish  for  the  cooperation  of  those  of  the  south  and  west,  and  I 
have  been  requested,  as  more  convenient  in  position  than  they 
are,  to  solicit  that  cooperation.  Having  no  personal  acquaintance  ■ 
with  those  who  are  charged  with  the  direction  of  the  college  of 
J  I  do  not  know  how  more  eflfectually  to  communi- 
cate these  views  to  them,  than  by  availing  myself  of  the  knowl- 
edge I  have  of  your  zeal  for  the  happiness  and  improvement  of 


222  JEFFERSON'S    WOREb. 

our  country.  I  take  the  liberty,  therefore,  of  requesting  you  to 
place  the  subject  before  the  proper  authorities  of  that  institution, 
and  if  they  approve  the  measure,  to  solicit  a  concurrent  proceed- 
ing on  their  part  to  carry  it  into  effect.  Besides  petitioning  Con- 
gress, I  Nwould  propose  that  ihey  address  in  their  corporate  capac- 
ity, a  letter  to  their  delegates  and  senators  in  Congress,  soliciting 
their  best  endeavors  to  obtain  the  repeal  of  the  duty  on  imported 
books.  I  cannot  but  suppose  that  such  an  application  will  be  re- 
spected by  them,  and  will  engage  their  votes  and  endeavors  to 
effect  an  object  so  reasonable.  A  conviction  that  science  is  im- 
portant to  the  preservation  of  our  republican  government,  and 
that  it  is  also  essential  to  its  protection  against  foreign  power,  in- 
duces me,  on  this  occasion,  to  step  beyond  the  limits  of  that  re- 
tirement to  which  age  and  inclination  equally  dispose  me,  and  I 
am  without  a  doubt  that  the  same  considerations  will  induce  you 
to  excuse-the  trouble  I  propose  to  you,  and  that  you  will  kindly 
accept  the  assurance  of  my  high  respect  and  esteem. 


TO    NATHANIEL    MACON. 

MoNTfCELLO,  November  23,  1821. 

Deae  Sir, — Absence  at  an  occasional  but  distant  residence, 
prevented  my  receiving  your  friendly  letter  of  October  20th  till 
three  days  ago.  A  line  from  my  good  old  friends  is  like  balm  to 
my  soul.  You  ask  me  what  you  are  to  do  with  my  letter  of 
September  19th  ?  I  wrote  it,  my  dear  Sir,  with  no  other  view 
than  to  pour  my  thoughts  into  your  bosom.  I  knew  they  would 
be  safe  there,  and  I  believed  they  would  be  welcome.  But  if 
you  think,  as  you  say,  that  "  good  may  be  done  by  showing  it  to 
a  few  well-tried  friends"  I  have  no  objection  to  that,  but  ulti- 
mately you  cannot  do  better  than  to  throw  it  into  the  fire. 

My  confidence,  as  you  kindly  observed,  has  been  often  abused 
by  the  publication  of  my  letters  for  the  purposes  of  interest  or 
vanity,  and  it  has  been  to  me  the  source  of  much  pain  to  be  ex- 
hibited before  the  public  in  forms  not  meant  for  them.     I  receive 


00REE8P0NDENCE.  223 

letters  expressed  in  the  most  friendly  and  even  affectionate  terms, 
sometimes,  perhaps,  asking  my'opinion  on  some  subject.  I  can- 
not refuse  to  answer  such  letters,  nor  can  I  do  it  dryly  and  sus- 
piciously. Among  a  score  or  two  of  such  correspondents,  one 
perhaps  betrays  me.  I  feel  it  mortifyingly,  but  conclude  I  had 
better  incur  one  treachery  than  offend  a  score  or  two  of  good 
people.  I  sometimes  expressly  desire  that  my  letter  may  not  be 
published  ;  but  this  is  so  like  requesting  a  man  not  to  steal  or 
cheat,  that  I  am  ashamed  of  it  after  I  have  done  it. 

Our  government  is  now  taking  so  steady  a  course  as  to  show 
by  what  road  it  will  pass  to  destruction,  to-wit :  by  consolida- 
tion first,  and  then  corruption,  its  necessary  consequence.  The 
engine  of  consolidation  will  be  the  federal  judiciary  ;  the  two 
other  branches,  the  corrupting  and  corrupted  instruments.  I  fear 
an  explosion  in  our  State  Legislature.  I  wish  they  may  restrain 
themselves  to  a  strong  but  temperate  protestation.  Virginia  is 
not  at  present  in  favor  with  her  co-States.  An  opposition  headed 
by  her  would  determine  all  the  anti-Missouri  States  to  take  the 
contrary  side.  She  had  better  lie  by,  therefore,  till  the  shoe  shall 
pinch  an  eastern  State.  Let  the  cry  be  first  raised  from  that 
quarter,  and  we  may  fall  into  it  with  effect.  But  I  fear  our  east- 
ern associates  wish  for  consolidation,  in  which  they  would  be 
joined  by  the  smaller  States  generally.  But,  with  one  foot  in 
the  grave,  I  have  no  right  to  meddle  with  these  things.  Ever 
and  affectionately  yours. 


TO  . 

iloNTicKLLo,  November  29,  1 821. 

Deah  Sih, — You  have  often  gratified  me  by  your  astronomi- 
cal communications,  and  I  am  now  about  to  amuse  you  with  one 
of  mine.  But  I  must  first  explain  the  circumstances  which  have 
drawn  me  into  a  speculation  so  foreign  to  the  path  of  life  which 
the  times  in  which  I  have  lived,  more  than  my  own  incliuatioos 
have  led  me  to  pm-sue. 


224  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

I  had  long  deemed  it  incumbent  on  the  authorities  of  our 
country,  to  have  the  great  western  wilderness  beyond  the  Mis- 
sissippi, explored,  to  make  known  its  geography,  its  natural  pro- 
ductions, its  general  character  and  inhabitants.  Two  attempts 
which  I  had  myself  made  formerly,  before  the  country  was  ours, 
the  one  from  west  to  east,  the  other  from  east  to  west,  had  both 
proved  abortive.  When  called  to  the  administration  of  the  gen- 
eral government,  I  made  this  an  object  of  early  attention,  and  pro- 
posed it  to  Congress.  They  voted  a  sum  of  five  thousand  dollars 
for  its  execution,  and  I  placed  Captain  Lewis  at  the  head  of  the 
enterprise'  No  man  within  the  range  of  my  acquaintance,  united 
so  manj  -jf  the  qualifications  necessary  for  its  successful  directiori. 
But  he  had  not  received  such  an  astronomical  education  as  might 
enable  him  to  give  us  the  geography  of  the  country  with  the 
precision  desired.  The  Missouri  and  Columbia,  which  were  to 
constitute  the  tract  of  his  journey,  were  rivers  which  varied  little 
in  their  progressive  latitudes,  but  changed  their  longitudes  rapidly 
and  at  every  step.  To  qualify  him  for  making  these  observa- 
tions, so  important  to  the  value  of  the  enterprise,  I  encouraged 
him  to  apply  himself  to  this  particular  object,  and  gave  him 
letters  to  Doctor  Patterson  and  Mr.  Ellicott,  requesting  them  to  in- 
struct him  in  the  necessary  processes.  Those  for  the  longitude 
would  of  course  be  founded  on  the  lunar  distances.  But  as  these 
require  essentially  the  aid  of  a  time-keeper,  it  occurred  to  me  that 
during  a  journey  of  two,  three,  or  four  years,  exposed  to  so  many 
accidents  as  himself  and  the  instrument  would  be,  we  might  ex- 
pect with  certainty  that  it  would  become  deranged,  and  in  a 
desert  country  where  it  could  not  be  repaired.  I  thought  it  then 
highly  important  that  some  means  of  observation  should  be  fur- 
nished him,  if  any  could  be,  which  should  be  practicable  aud 
competejit  to  ascertain  his  longitudes  in  that  event.  The  equa- 
torial occurred  to  myself  as  the  most  promising  substitute.  I  ob- 
served only  that  Ramsden,  in  his  explanation  of  its  uses,  and 
particularly  that  of  finding  the  longitude  at  land,  still  required 
his  observer  to  have  the  aid  of  a  time-keeper.  But  this  cannot 
be  necessary,  for  the  margin  of  the  equatorial  circle  of  this  in- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  225 

strument  being  divided  into  time  by  bonrs,  minutes,  and  seconds, 
supplies  the  main  functions  of  the  time-keeper,  and  for  measur- 
ing merely  the  interval  of  the  observations,  is  such  as  not  to  be 
neglected.  A  portable  pendulum,  for  counting,  by  an  assistant. 
would  fully  answer  that  purpose.  I  suggested  my  fears  to  sev- 
eral of  our  best  astronomical  friends,  and  my  wishes  that  other 
processes  should  be  furnished  him,  if  any  could  be,  which  might 
guard  us  ultimately  from  disappointment.  Several  other  methods 
were  proposed,  but  all  requiring  the  use  of  a  time-keeper.  That 
of  the  equatorial  being  recommended  by  none,  and  other  duties 
refusing  me  time  for  protracted  consultations,  I  relinquished  the 
idea  for  that  occasion.  But,  if  a  sound  one,  it  should  not  be 
abandoned.  Those  deserts  are  yet  to  be  explored,  and  their  ge- 
ography given  tQ  the  world  and  ourselves  with  a  correctness 
worthy  of  the  science  of  the  age.  The  acquisition  of  the  coun- 
try before  Captain  Lewis'  departure  facilitated  our  enterprise,  but 
his  time-keeper  failed  early  in  his  journey.  His  dependence, 
then,  was  on  the  compass  and  log-line,  with  the  correction  of  lat- 
itudes only  ;  and  the  true  longitudes  of  the  different  points  of  the 
Missouri,  of  the  Stony  Mountains,  the  Columbia  and  Pacific,  at 
its  mouth,  remain  yet  to  be  obtained  by  future  enterprise. 

The  circumstance  which  occasions  a  recurrence  of  the  subject 
to  my  mind  at  this  time  particularly  is  this  :  our  legislature,  some 
time  ago,  came  to  a  determination  that  an  accurate  map  should 
be  made  of  our  State.  The  late  John  Wood  was  employed  on 
it.  Its  first  elements  are  prepared  by  maps  of  the  several  coun- 
ties. But  these  have  been  made  by  chain  and  compass  only, 
which  suppose  the  surface  of  the  earth  to  be  a  plane.  To  fit 
them  together,  they  must  be  accommodated  to  its  real  spherical 
surface  ;  and  this  can  be  done  only  by  observations  of  latitude 
and  longitude,  taken  at  different  points  of  the  area  to  which 
they  are  to  be  reduced.  It  is  true  that  in  the  lower  and  more 
populous  parts  of  the  State,  the  method  of  lunar  distances  by  the 
circle  or  sextant,  and  time-keeper,  may  be  used ;  because  those 
parts  furnish  means  of  repairing  or  replacing  a  deranged  time- 
keeper, But  the* deserts  beyond  the  Alleghany  are  as  destitute 
VOL.  vii.  1-5 


226  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

of  resource  in  that  case,  as  those  of  the  Missouri.  The  question 
then  recurs  whether  the  equatorial,  without  the  auxihary  of  a 
time-keeper,  is  not  competent  to  the  ascertainment  of  longitudes 
at  land,  where  a  fixed  meridian  can  always  be  obtained  ?  and 
whether  indeed  it  may  not  everywhere  at  land,  be  a  readier  and 
preferable  instrument  for  that  purpose  ?  To  these  questions  [ 
ask  your  attentions ;  and  to  show  the  grounds  on  which  I  enter- 
tain the  opinion  myself,  I  will  briefly  explain  the  principles  of 
the  process,  and  the  peculiarities  of  the  instrument  which  give  it 
the  competence  I  ascribe  to  it.  And  should  you  concur  in  the 
opinion,  I  will  further  ask  you  to  notice  any  particular  circum- 
stances claiming  attention  in  the  process,  and  the  corrections 
which  the  observations  may  necessarily  require.  As  to  myself, 
I  am  an  astronomer  of  theory  only,  little  versed  in  practical  ob- 
servations, and  the  minute  attentions  and  corrections  they  require. 
I  proceed  now  to  the  explanation. 

A  method  of  finding  the  longitude  of  a  place  at  land,  imthout 
a  time-keeper. 

If  two  persons,  at  different  points  of  the  same  hemisphere,  (as 
Greenwich  and  Washington,  for  example,)  observe  the  same  ce- 
lestial phenomenon,  at  the  same  instant  of  time,  the  difference  of 
the  times  marked  by  their  respective  clocks  is  the  difference  of 
their  longitudes,  or  the  distance  between  their  meridians.  To 
catch  with  precision  the  same  instant  of  time  for  these  simul- 
taneous observations,  the  moon's  motion  in  her  orbit  is  the  best 
element ;  her  change  of  place  (about  a  half  second  of  space  in 
a  second  of  time)  is  rapid  enough  to  be  ascertained  by  a  good 
instrument  with  sufficient  precision  for  the  object.  But  suppose 
the  observer  at  Washington,  or  in  a  desert,  to  be  without  a  time- 
keeper ;  the  equatorial  is  the  instrument  to  be  used  in  that  case. 
Again,  we  have  supposed  a  cotemporaneous  observer  at  Green- 
wich. But  his  functions  may  be  supplied  by  the  nautical  al- 
manac, adapted  to  that  place,  and  enabling  us  to  calculate  for 
any  instant  of  time  the  meridian  distances  there  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  necessary  to  be  observed  for  this  purpose. 

The  observer  at  Washington,  choosing  the  time  when  theii 


CORRESPONDENCE.  227 

position  is  suitable,  is  to  adjust  his  equatorial  to  his  meridian,  to 
his  latitude,  and  to  the  plane  of  his  horizon  ;  or  if  he  is  in  a 
desert  where  neither  meridian  nor  latitude  is  yet  ascertained,  the 
advantages  of  this  noble  instrument  are,  that  it  enables  him  to 
find  both  in  the  course  of  a  few  hom-s.  Thus  prepared,  let  him 
ascertain  by  observation  the  right  ascension  of  the  moon  from 
that  of  a  known  star,  or  their  horary  distance  ;  and,  at  the  same 
instant,  her  horary  distance  from  his  meridian.  Her  right  ascen- 
sion at  the  instant  thus  ascertained,  enter  with  that  of  the  nautical 
almanac,  and  calculate,  by  its  tables,  what  was  her  horary  dis- 
tance from  the  meridian  of  Greenwich  at  the  instant  she  had  at- 
tained that  point  of  right  ascension,  or  that  horary  distance  from 
the  same  star.  The  addition  of  these  meridian  distances,  if  the 
moon  was  between  the  two  meridians,  or  the  subtraction  of  the 
lesser  from  the  greater,  if  she  was  on  the  same  side  of  both,  is 
the  differences  of  their  longitudes. 

This  general  theory  admits  different  cases,  of  which  the  ob- 
server may  avail  himself,  according  to  the  particular  position  of 
the  heavenly  bodies  at  the  moment  of  observation. 

Case  1st.  When  the  moon  is  on  his  meridian,  or  on  that  of 
Greenwich. 

Second.  When  the  star  is  on  either  meridian. 

Third.  When  the  moon  and  star  are  on  the  same  side  of  his 
meridian. 

Fourth.  When  they  are  on  different  sides. 

For  instantaneousness  of  observation,  the  equatorial  has  great 
advantage  over  the  circle  or  sextant ;  for  being  truly  placed  in 
the  meridian  beforehand,  the  telescope  may  be  directed  suf- 
ficiently in  advance  of  the  moon's  motion,  for  time  to  note  its 
place  on  the  equatorial  circle,  before  she  attains  that  point.  Then 
observe,  until  her  limb  touches  the  cross-hairs ;  and  in  that  in- 
stant direct  the  telescope  to  the  star ;  that  completes  the  observa- 
tion, and  the  place  of  the  star  mxay  be  read  at  leisure.  The  ap- 
paratus for  correcting  the  effects  of  refraction  and  parallax,  which 
is  fixed  on  the  eye-tube  of  the  telescope,  saves  time  by  render- 


228  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

ing  the  notation  of  altitudes  unnecessary,  and  dispenses  with  the 
use  of  either  a  time-keeper  or  portable  pendulum. 

I  have  observed  that,  if  placed  in  a  desert  where  neither  me- 
ridian nor  latitude  is  yet  ascertained,  the  equatorial  enables  the 
observer  to  find  both  in  a  few  hours.  For  the  latitude,  adjust 
by  the  cross-levels  the  azimuth  plane  of  the  instrument  to  the 
horizon  of  the  place.  Bring  down  the  equatorial  plane  to  an  ex- 
act parallelism  with  it,  its  pole  then  becoming  vertical.  By  the 
nut  and  pinion  commanding  it,  and  by  that  of  the  semi-circle  of 
declination,  direct  the  telescope  to  the  sun.  Follow  its  path 
with  the  telescope  by  the  combined  use  of  these  two  pinions, 
and  when  it  has  attained  its  greatest  altitude,  calculate  the  lati- 
tude as  when  taken  by  a  sextant. 

For  finding  the  meridian,  set  the  azimuth  circle  to  the  hori- 
zon, elevate  the  equatorial  circle  to  the  complement  of  the  lati- 
tude, and  fix  it  by  the  clamp  and  tightening  screw  of  the  two 
brass  segments  of  arches  below.  By  the  declination  semicircle 
set  the  telescope  to  the  sun's  declination  of  the  moment.  Turn 
the  instrument  towards  the  meridian  by  guess,  and  by  the  com- 
bined movement  of  the  equatorial  and  azimuth  circles  direct  the 
telescope  to  the  sun,  then  by  the  pinion  of  the  equatorial  alone, 
follow  the  path  of  the  sun  with  the  telescope.  If  it  swerves  from 
that  path,  turn  the  azimuth  circle  until  it  shall  follow  the  sun  ac- 
curately. A  distant  stake  or  tree  should  mark  the  meridian,  to 
guard  against  its  loss  by  any  accidental  jostle  of  the  instrument. 
The  12  o'clock  line  will  then  be  in  the  true  meridian,  and  the 
axis  of  the  equatorial  circle  will  be  parallel  with  that  of  the  earth. 
The  instrument  is  then  in  its  true  position  for  the  observations 
of  the  night.  To  the  competence  and  the  advantages  of  this 
method,  I  will  only  add  that  these  instruments  are  high-priced. 
Mine  cost  thirty-five  guineas  in  Ramsden's  shop,  a  little  before 
the  Revolution.  I  will  lengthen  my  letter,  already  too  long,  only 
by  assurances  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


CORRESPONDENCE,  229 


TO    NICHOLAS. 

JIdntioei.i.o,  Decemler  11,  1821 

Dear  Sir, — Your  letter  of  December  the  19th  places  me  un- 
der a  dilemma,  which  I  cannot  solve  but  by  an  exposition  of  the 
naked  truth.  I  would  have  wished  this  rather  to  have  remained 
as  hitherto,  w  jhout  inquiry ;  but  your  inquiries  have  a  right  to 
be  answered.  I  will  do  it  as  exactly  as  the  great  lapse  of  time 
and  a  waning  memory  will  enable  me.  I  may  misremember  in- 
different circumstances,  but  can  be  right  in  substance. 

At  the  time  when  the  republicans  of  our  country  were  so  much 
alarmed  at  the  proceedings  of  the  federal  ascendency  in  Congress, 
in  the  executive  and  the  judiciary  departments,  it  became  a  mat- 
ter of  serious  consideration  how  head  could  be  made  against 
their  enterprises  on  the  constitution.  The  leading  republicans  in 
Congress  found  themselves  of  no  use  there,  brow-beaten,  as  they 
were,  by  a  bold  and  overwhelming  majority.  They  concluded 
to  retire  from  that  field,  take  a  stand  in  the  State  legislatures, 
and  endeavor  there  to  arrest  their  progress.  The  alien  and  sedi- 
tion laws  furnished  the  particular  occasion.  The  sympathy  be- 
tween Virginia  and  Kentucky  was  more  cordial,  and  more  inti- 
mately confidential,  than  between  any  other  two  States  of  repub- 
lican policy.  Mr.  Madison  came  into  the  Virginia  legislature.  I 
was  then  in  the  Vice-Presidency,  and  could  not  leave  my  station. 
But  your  father,  Colonel  W.  C.  Nicholas,  and  myself  happening 
to  be  together,  the  engaging  the  co-operation  of  Kentucky  in  an 
energetic  protestation  against  the  constitutionality  of  those  laws, 
became  a  subject  of  consultation.  Those  gentlemen  pressed  me 
strongly  to  sketch  resolutions  for  that  purpose,  your  father  under- 
taking to  introduce  them  to  that  legislature,  with  a  solemn  as- 
surance, which  I  strictly  required,  that  it  should  not  be  known 
from  what  quarter  they  came.  I  drew  and  delivered  them  to 
him,  and  in  keeping  their  origin  secret,  he  fulfilled  his  pledge  of 
honor.  Some  years  after  this,  Colonel  Nicholas  asked  me  if  1 
would  have  any  objection  to  its  being  known  that  I  had  drawn 
them.    I  pointedly  enjoined  that  it  should  not.    Whether  he  had 


230  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

uugua.'dedly  intimated  it  before  to  any  one,  I  know  not;  but  I 
afterwards  observed  in  the  papers  repeated  imputations  of  them 
to  me ;  on  which,  as  has  been  my  practice  on  all  occasions  of 
imputation,  I  have  observed  entire  silence.  The  question,  in- 
deed, has  never  before  been  put  to  me,  nor  should  I  answer  it  to 
any  other  than  yourself;  seeing  no  good  end  to  be  proposed  by 
it,  and  the  desire  of  tranquillity  inducing  with  me  a  wish  to  be 
■vithdrawn  from  public  notice.  Your  father's  zeal  and  talents 
were  too  well  known,  to  derive  any  additional  distinction  from 
the  penning  these  resolutions.  That  circumstance,  surely,  was 
of  far  less  merit  than  the  proposing  and  carrying  them  through 
the  legislature  of  his  State.  The  only  fact  in-  this  statement,  on 
which  my  memory  is  not  distinct,  is  the  time  and  occasion  of 
the  consultation  with  your  father  and  Colonel  Nicholas.  It  took 
place  here  I  know  ;  but  whether  any  other  person  was  present, 
or  communicated  with,  is  my  doubt.  I  think  Mr.  Madison  was 
either  with  us,  or  consulted,  but  my  memory  is  uncertain  as  to 
minute  details. 

I  fear,  dear  Sir,  we  are  now  in  such  another  crisis,  with  this 
difference  only,  that  the  judiciary  branch  is  alone  and  single 
handed  in  the  present  assaults  on  the  constitution.  But  its  as- 
saults are  more  sure  and  deadly,  as  from  an  agent  seemingly  pas- 
sive and  unassuming.  May  you  and  your  cotemporaries  meet 
them  with  the  same  determination  and  effect,  as  your  father  and 
his  did  the  alien  and  sedition  laws,  and  preserve  inviolate  a  con- 
stitution, which,  cherished  in  all  its  chastity  and  purity,  will  prove 
in  the  end  a  blessing  to  all  the  nations  of  the  earth.  With  these 
prayers,  accept  those  for  your  own  happiness  and  prosperity. 


TO    MESSRS.    GEORGE    W.    SUMMERS    AND    JOHN   B.    GARLAND. 

MoN'nriii.i.u,  Febnmry  27,  1822. 

Gentlemen, — I  have  received  your  favor  of  the  18th,  and  am 
duly  sensible  of  the  honor  done  my  name  by  its  association  with 
the  institution  formed  in  yoLU  college  for  improvement  in  the  art 


OOERESPONDENCE.  231 

of  speaking.  The  efforts  of  the  members  will,  I  trust,  give  a 
just  reputation  to  the  society  and  reflect  on  its  name  the  honoi 
which  it  cannot  derive  from  it.  In  a  country  and  government 
like  ours,  eloquence  is  a  powerful  instrument,  well  worthy  of  the. 
special  pursuit  of  our  youth.  Models,  indeed,  of  chaste  and  clas- 
sical oratory  are  truly  too  rare  with  us  ;  nor  do  I  recollect  any  re- 
markable in  England.  Among  the  ancients  the  most  perfect 
specimens  are  perhaps  to  be  found  in  Livy,  Sallust  and  Tacitus. 
Their  pith  and  brevity  constitute  perfection  itself  for  an  audience 
of  sages,  on  whom  froth  and  fancy  would  be  lost  in  air.  But  in 
ordinary  cases,  and  with  us  particularly,  more  development  is 
necessary.  For  senatorial  eloquence,  Demosthenes  is  the  finest 
model ;  for  the  bar,  Cicero.  The  former  had  more  logic,  the 
latter  more  imagination. 

Of  the  eloquence  of  the  pen  we  have  fine  samples  in  English. 
Robertson,  Sterne,  Addison,  are  of  the  first  merit  in  the  diflerenl 
characters  of  composition.  Hume,  in  the  circumstance  of  style 
is  equal  to  any ;  but  his  tory  principles  spread  a  cloud  over  his 
many  and  great  excellencies.  The  charms  of  his  style  and  mat- 
ter have  made  tories  of  all  England,  and  doubtful  republicans 
here. 

You  say  that  any  advice  which  I  could  give  you  would  be  ac- 
ceptable. But,  for  this,  you  cannot  be  in  better  hands  than  of 
the  worthy  professors  of  your  own  college.  Their  counsels 
would,  I  am  sure,  embrace  everything  I  could  ofler.  It  will  not, 
however,  be  a  work  of  mere  supereorgation  if  it  will  gratify  you, 
and  will  furnish  a  stronger  proof  of  my  desire  to  encourage  you 
in  your  laudable  dispositions.  Some  thirty-six  or  thirty-seven 
years  ago,  I  had  a  nephew,  the  late  Peter  Carr,  whose  education 
I  directed,  and  had  much  at  heart  his  future  fortunes.  Residing 
abroad  at  the  time  in  public  service,  my  counsels  to  him  were 
necessarily  communicated  by  letters.  Searching  among  my  papers 
I  find  a  letter  written  to  him,  and  conveying  such  advice  as  I 
thought  suitable  to  the  particular  period  of  his  age  and  educa- 
tion. He  was  then  about  fifteen,  and  had  made  some  progress 
in  classical  reading.    As  your  present  situation  may  be  somewhat 


232  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

similar,  you  may  find  in  that  letter  some  thnjgs  worth  remember- 
ing. I  enclose  you  a  copy  therefore.  It  was  written  in  haste,  un- 
der the  pressure  of  official  labors,  and  with  no  view  of  being 
ever  seen  but  by  himself.  It  might  otherwise  have  been  made 
more  correct  in  style  and  matter.  But  such  as  it  is,  I  place  it  at 
your  service,  and  pray  you  to  receive  it  merely  as  a  compliance 
with  your  own  request,  and  as  a  proof  of  my  good  will  and  of 
my  best  wishes  for  your  success  in  the  career  of  life  for  which 
you  are  so  worthily  and  laudably  preparing  yourselves. 


TO    MB.    EDWAED    EVERETT,    OF    CAMBKIDGE,    MASSACHUSETTS. 

MoNTfCKLLO,  March  2,  1822. 

I  am  thankful  to  you.  Sir,  for  the  very  edifying  view  of  Eu- 
rope which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me.  Tossed  at 
random  by  the  newspapers  on  an  ocean  of  uncertainties  and  false- 
hoods, it  is  joyful  at  times  to  catch  the  glimmering  of  a  beacon 
which  shows  us  truly  where  we  are.  De  Pradt's  Europe  had 
some  effect  in  this  way  ;  but  the  less  as  the  author  was  less  known 
in  character.  The  views  presented  by  your  brother  unite  our 
confidence  with  the  soundness  of  his  observation  and  informa- 
tion. I  have  read  the  work  with  great  avidity  and  profit,  and 
have  found  my  ideas  of  Europe  in  general,  rallied  by  it  to  points 
of  good  satisfaction.  In  the  single  chapter  on  England  only, 
where  his  theories  are  new,  if  we  cannot  suddenly  give  up  all 
our  old  notions,  he  furnishes  us  abundant  matter  for  reflection 
and  a  revisal  of  them.  I  have  long  considered  the  present  crisis 
of  England,  and  the  origin  of  the  evils  which  are  lowering  over 
her,  as  produced  by  enormous  excess  of  her  expenditures  beyond 
her  income.  To  pay  even  the  interest  of  the  debt  contracted, 
she  is  obliged  to  take  from  the  industrious  so  much  of  their  earn- 
mgs,  as  not  to  leave  enough  for  their  backs  and  bellies  They 
are  daily,  therefore,  passing  over  to  the  pauper-list,  to  subfist  on 
the  declining  means  of  those  still  holding  up,  and  when  these 
also  shall  be  exhausted,  what  next  ?    Reformation  cannot  remedy 


OOEEESPONDENOE.  233 

this.  It  could  only  prevent  its  recurrence  when  once  relieved 
from  the  debt.  To  effect  that  relief  I  see  but  one  possible  and 
just  course.  Considering  the  funded  and  real  property  as  equal, 
and  the  debt  as  much  of  the  one  as  the  other,  for  the  holder 
of  property  to  give  up  one-half  to  those  of  the  funds,  and  the 
latter  to  the  nation  the  whole  of  what  it  owes  them.  But  this 
the  nature  of  man  forbids  us  to  expect  without  blows,  and  blows 
will  decide  it  by  a  promiscuous  sacrifice  of  life  and  property. 
The  debt  thus,  or  otherwise,  extinguished,  a  rtal  representation 
introduced  into  the  government  of  either  property  or  people,  or 
of  both,  renouncing  eternal  war,  restraining  future  expenses  to 
future  income,  and  breaking  up  forever  the  consuming  circle  of 
extravagance,  debt,  insolvency,  and  revolution,  the  island  would 
then  again  be  in  the  degree  of  force  which  nature  has  measured 
out  to  it,  of  respectable  station  in  the  scale  of  nations,  but  not  at 
their  head.  I  sincerely  wish  she  could  peaceably  get  into  this 
state  of  being,  as  the  present  prospects  of  southern  Europe  seem 
to  need  the  acquisition  of  new  weights  in  their  balance,  rather 
than  the  loss  of  old  ones.  I  set  additional  value  on  this  volume, 
inasmuch  as  it  has  procured  me  the  occasion  of  expressing  to  you 
my  high  estimation  of  your  character,  the  interest  with  which  I 
look  to  it  as  an  American,  and  the  great  esteem  and  respect  with 
which  I  beg  leave  to  salute  you. 


TO    JEDEDIAH    MORSE. 

MoxTiuKLLii,  M:irdi  6,  IS22. 

SiE, — I  have  duly  received  your  letter  of  February  the  16th, 
and  have  now  to  express  ^my  sense  of  the  honorable  station  pro- 
posed to  my  ex-brethren  and  myself,  in  the  constitution  of  the 
society  for  the  civilization  and  improvement  of  the  Indian  triljes. 
The  object  too  expressed,  as  that  of  the  association,  is  one  which 
I  have  ever  had  much  at  heart,  and  never  omitted  an  occasion 
of  promoting  while  I  have  been  in  situations  to  do  it  with  effect, 
and  nothing,  even  now,  in  the  calm  of  age  and  retirement,  would 


234  JEFFERSON'S    WOEEiS. 

excite  in  me  a  more  lively  interest  than  an  approvable  plau  of 
raising  that  respectable  and  unfortunate  people  from  the  state  of 
physical  and  moral  abjection,  to  which  they  have  been  reduced 
by  circiunstances  foreign  to  them.  That  the  plan  now  proposed 
is  entitled  to  unmixed  approbation,  I  am  not  prepared  to  say,  after 
mature  consideration,  and  with  all  the  partialities  which  its  pro- 
fessed object  would  rightfully  claim  from  me. 

I  shall  not  undertake  to  draw  the  line  of  demarcation  be- 
tween private  associations  of  laudable  views  and  unimposing 
numbers,  and  those  whose  magnitude  may  rivalize  and  jeopard- 
ize the  march  of  regular  government.  Yet  such  a  line  does  exist. 
I,  have  seen  the  days,  they  were  those  which  preceded  the  revo- 
lution, when  even  this  last  and  perilous  .engine  became  neces- 
sary ;  bat  they  were  days  which  no  man  would  wish  to  see  a  sec^ 
ond  time.  That  was  the  case  where  the  regular  authorities  of 
the  government  had  combined  against  the  rights  of  the  people, 
and  no  means  of  correction  remained  to  them  but  to  organize  a 
collateral  power,  which,  with  their  support,  might  rescue  and  se- 
cure their  violated  rights.  But  such  is  not  the  case  with  our 
government.  We  need  hazard  no  collateral  power,  which,  by  a 
change  of  its  original  views,  and  assumption  of  others  we  know 
not  how  virtuous  or  how  mischievous,  would  be  ready  organized 
and  in  force  sutRcient  to  shake  the  established  foundations  of  so- 
ciety, and  endanger  its  peace  and  the  principles  on  which  it  is 
based.  Is  not  the  machine  now  proposed  of  this  gigantic  stature  ? 
It  is  to  consist  of  the  ex-Presidents  of  the  United  States,  the  Vice 
President,  the  Heads  of  all  the  executive  departments,  the  mem- 
bers of  the  supreme  judiciary,  the  Governors  of  the  several  States 
and  territories,  all  the  members  of  both  Houses  of  Congress,  all 
the  general  officers  of  the  army,  the  commissioners  of  the  navy, 
all  Presidents  and  Professors  of  colleges  and  theological  semina- 
ries, all  the  clergy  of  the  United  States,  the  Presidents  and  Sec- 
retaries of  all  associations  having  relation  to  Indians,  all  com- 
manding officers  within  or  near  Indian  territories,  all  Indian  su- 
perintendents and  agents  ;  all  these  ex-  officio  ;  and  as  many  pri- 
vate individuals  as  will  pay  a  certain  price  for  membership.     Ob- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  235 

serve,  too,  that  the  clergy  will  constitute*  nineteen  twentieths  of 
this  association,  and,  by  the  law  of  the  majority,  may  command 
the  twentieth  part,  which,  composed  of  all  the  high  authorities 
of  the  United  States,  civil  and  military,  may  be  outvoted  and 
wielded  by  the  nineteen  parts  with  uncontrollable  power,  both 
as  to  purpose  and  process.  Can  this  formidable  array  be  revie  wed 
without  dismay  ?  It  will  be  said,  that  in  this  association  will  be 
all  the  confidential  officers  of  the  government :  the  choice  of  the 
people  themselves.  No  man  on  earth  has  more  im])licit  confi- 
dence than  myself  in  the  integrity  and  discretion  of  this  chosen 
band  of  servants.  But  is  confidence  or  discretion,  or  is  strict 
limit,  the  principle  of  our  constitution  ?  It  will  comprehend,  in- 
deed, all  the  functionaries  of  the  government ;  but  seceded  from 
their  constitutional  stations  as  guardians  of  the  nation,  and  acting 
not  by  the  laws  of  their  station,  but  by  those  of  a  voluntary  so- 
ciety, having  no  limit  to  their  purposes  but  the  same  will  which 
constitutes  their  existence.  It  will  be  the  authorities  of  the  peo- 
ple and  all  infl.uential  characters  from  among  them,  arrayed  on 
one  side,  and  on  the  other,  the  people  themselves  deserted  by 
their  leaders.  It  is  a  fearful  array.  It  will  be  said  that  these  are 
imaginary  fears.  I  know  they  are  so  at  present.  I  know  it  is  as 
impossible  for  these  agents  of  our  choice  and  unbounded  confi- 
dence, to  harbor  machinations  against  the  adored  principles  of 
our  constitution,  as  for  gravity  to  change  its  direction,  and  gravid 
bodies  to  mount  upwards.  The  fears  are  indeed  imaginary,  but 
the  example  is  real.  Under  its  authority,  as  a  precedent,  future 
associations  will  arise  with  objects  at  which  we  should  shudder 
at  this  time.  The  society  of  Jacobins,  in  another  country,  was 
instituted  on  principles  and  views  as  virtuous  as  ever  kindled  the 
hearts  of  patriots.  It  was  the  pure  patriotism  of  their  purposes 
which  extended  their  association  to  the  limits  of  the  nation,  and 
rendered  their  power  within  it  boundless  ;  and  it  was  this  powei 
which  degenerated  their  principles  and  practices  to  such  enor- 

*  The  clergy  of  the  United  States  may  probably  be  estimated  at  eight  thou- 
sand. The  residue  of  this  society  at  four  hundred;  but  if  the  former  number 
be  halved,  the  reasoning  will  be  the  same. 


286  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

mities  as  never  before  could  have  been  imagined.  Yet  these 
were  men,  and  we  and  oin*  descendants  will  be  no  more.  The 
present  is  a  case  where,  if  ever,  we  are  to  guard  against  ourselves ; 
not  against  ourselves  as  we  are,  but  as  we  may  be  ;  for  who  can 
now  imagine  what  we  may  become  under  circumstances  not  now 
imaginable  ?  The  object  of  this  institution,  seems  to  require  so 
hazardous  an  example  as  little  as  any  which  could  be  proposed. 
The  government  is,  at  this  time,  going  on  with  the  process  of 
civilizing  the  Indians,  on  a  plan  probably  as  promising  as  any 
one  of  us  is  able  to  devise,  and  with  resources  more  competent 
than  we  could  expect  to  command  by  voluntary  taxation.  Is  it 
that  the  new  characters  called  into  association  with  those  of  the 
government,  are  wiser  than  these  ?  Is  it  that  a  plan  originated 
by  a  meeting  of  private  individuals  is  better  than  that  prepared  by 
the  concentrated  wisdom  of  the  nation,  of  men  not  self-chosen, 
but  clothed  with  the  full  confidence  of  the  people  ?  Is  it  that 
there  is  no  danger  that  a  new  authority,  marching,  independently, 
along  side  of  the  government,  in  the  same  line  and  to  the  same 
object,  may  not  produce  collision,  may  not  thwart  and  obstruct 
the  operations  of  the  government,  or  wrest  the  object  entirely 
from  their  hands  ?  Might  wc  not  as  well  appoint  a  committee 
for  each  department  of  the  government,  to  counsel  and  direct  its 
head  separately,  as  volunteer  ourselves  to  counsel  and  direct  the 
whole,  in  mass  ?  And  might  we  not  do  it  as  well  for  their  for- 
eign, their  fiscal,  and  their  military,  as  for  their  Indian  affairs  ? 
And  how  many  societies,  auxiliary  to  the  government,  may  we 
expect  to  see  spring  up,  in  imitation  of  this,  offering  to  associate 
themselves  in  this  and  that  of  its  functions  ?  In  a  word,  why 
not  take  the  government  out  of  its  constitutional  hands,  associate 
them  indeed  with  us,  to  preserve  a  semblance  that  the  acts  are 
theirs,  but  insuring  them  to  be  our  own  by  allowing  them  a 
minor  vote  only. 

These  considerations  have  impressed  my  mind  with  a  force  so 
irresistible,  that  (in  duty  bound  to  answer  your  polite  letter, 
without  which  I  should  not  have  obtruded  an  opinion)  I  have 
not  been  able  to  withhold  the  expression  of  them.     Not  know- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  237 

irig  the  individuals  who  have  proposed  this  plan,  I  cannot  be  con- 
ceived as  entertaining  personal  disrespect  for  them.  On  the  con- 
trary, I  see  in  the  printed  list  persons  for  whom  [  cherish  senti- 
ments of  sincere  friendship,  and  others,  for  whose  opinions  and 
purity  of  purpose  I  have  the  highest  respect.  Yet  thinking  as  1 
do,  that  this  association  is  unnecessary  ;  that  the  government  is 
proceeding  to  the  same  object  under  control  of  the  law  ;  that 
they  are  competent  to  it  in  wisdom,  in  means,  and  inclinatioii ; 
that  this  association,  this  wheel  within  a  wheel,  is  more  likely  to 
produce  collision  than  aid  ;  and  that  it  is,  in  its  magnitude,  of 
dangerous  example  ;  I  am  bound  to  say,  that,  as  a  dutifid  citizen, 
I  cannot  in  conscience  become  a  member  of  this  society,  possess- 
ing as  it  does  my  entire  confidence  in  the  integrity  of  its  views. 
I  feel  with  awe  the  weight  of  opinion  to  which  I  may  be  op- 
posed, and  that,  for  myself,  I  have  need  to  ask  the  indulgence  of 
a  belief  that  the  opinion  I  have  given  is  the  best  result  I  can  de- 
duce from  my  own  reason  and  experience,  and  that  it  is  sincerely 
conscientious.  Repeating,  therefore,  my  just  acknowledgments 
for  the  honor  proposed  to  me,  I  beg  leave  to  add  the  assurances 
to  the  'society  and  yourself  of  my  highest  confi.dence  and  con- 
sideration. 


TO    GENERAL    BRECKENRIDGE. 

MoNTiCKLLo,  Api-il  9,  1S22. 

Dear  General, — Your  favor  of  March  28th  was  received  on 
the  7th  instant.  We  failed  in  having  a  quorum  on  the  1st.  Mr. 
Johnson  and  General  Taylor  were  laboring  for  Lithgow  in  Rich- 
mond, and  Mr.  Madison  was  unwell.  On  the  score  of  business 
it  was  immaterial,  as  there  was  not  a  single  measure  to  be  pro- 
posed. The  loss  was  of  the  gratification  of  meeting  in  society 
with  those  whom  we  esteem.  This  is  the  valuable  effect  of  our 
semi-annual  meetings,  jubilees,  in  fact,  for  feasting  the  mind  and 
fostering  the  best  affections  of  the  heart  towards  those  who  merit 
them. 

The  four  rows  of  buildings  of  accommodation  are  so  nearly 


288  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

completed^  that  they  are  certain  of  being  entirely  so  in  the  course 
of  the  summer ;  and  our  funds,  as  you  have  seen  stated  in  our 
last  Report,  are  sufficient  to  meet  the  expense,  except  that  the 
delays  in  collecting  the  arrears  of  subscriptions  oblige  us  to  bor- 
row temporarily  from  this  year's  annuity,  which,  according  to 
that  Report,  had  another  destination.  These  buildings  done, 
■we  are  to  rest  on  our  oars,  and  passively  await  the  will  of  the 
legislature.  Our  future  course  is  a  plain  one.  We  have  pro- 
ceeded from  the  beginning  on  the  sound  determination  to  finish 
the  buildings  before  opening  the  institution ;  because,  once 
opened,  all  its  funds  will  be  absorbed  by  professors'  salaries,  &c., 
and  nothing  remain  ever  to  finish  the  buildings.  And  we  have 
thought  it  better  to  begin  two  or  three  years  later,  in  the  full  ex- 
tent proposed,  than  to  open,  and  go  on  forever,  with  a  half-way 
establishment.  Of  the  wisdom  of  this  proceeding,  and  of  its  greater 
good  to  the  public  finally,  I  cannot  a  moment  doubt.  Our  part 
then  is  to  pursue  with  steadiness  what  is  right,  turning  neither 
to  right  nor  left  for  the  intrigues  or  popular  delusions  of  the  day, 
assured  that  the  public  approbation  will  in  the  end  be  with  us. 
The  councils  of  the  legislature,  at  their  late  session,  were  poisoned 
unfortunately  by  the  question  of  the  seat  of  government,  and  the 
consequent  jealousies  of  our  views  in  erecting  the  large  building 
still  wanting.  This  lost  us  some  friends  who  feel  a  sincere  in- 
terest in  favor  of  the  University,  but  a  stronger  one  in  the  ques- 
tion respecting  the  seat  of  government.  They  seem  not  to  have 
considered  that  the  seat  of  the  government,  and  that  of  the  Uni- 
versity, are  incompatible  with  one  another  ;  that  if  the  former 
were  to  come  here,  the  latter  must  be  removed.  Even  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  placed  in  the  middle  of  London,  they  would  be 
deserted  as  seats  of  learning,  and  as  proper  places  for  training 
youth.  These  groundless  jealousies,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  be 
dissipated  by  sober  reflection,  during  the  separation  of  the  mem- 
bers ;  and  they  will  perceive,  before  their  next  meeting,  that  the 
large  building,  without  which  the  institution  cannot  proceed, 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  question  of  the  seat  of  government. 
If,  however,  the  ensuing  session  should  still  refuse  their  patron- 


COEEESPONDEFCE.  2Sf> 

age,  a  second  or  a  third  will  think  better,  and  result  fina_ly  in 
fulfilling  the  object  of  our  aim,  the  securing  to  our  country  a  full 
and  perpetual  institution  for  all  the  useful  sciences ;  one  which 
will  restore  us  to  our  former  station  in  the  confederacy.  It  may 
be  a  year  or  two  later  indeed ;  but  it  will  replace  us  in  full  grade, 
and  not  leave  us  among  the  mere  subalterns  of  the  league.  Pa- 
tience and  steady  perseverance  on  our  part  will  secure  the  blessed . 
end.  If  we  shrink,  it  is  gone  forever.  Our  autumnal  meeting 
will  be  interesting.  The  question  will  be  whether  we  shall  re- 
linquish the  scale  of  a  real  University,  the  rallying  centre  of  the 
South  and  the  West,  or  let  it  sink  to  that  of  a  common  academy. 
I  hope  you  will  be  with  us,  and  give  us  the  benefit  of  your  firm 
and  enlarged  views.  I  am  not  at  all  disheartened  with  what 
has  passed,  nor  disi^osed  to  give  up  the  ship.  We  have  only  to 
lie  still,  to  do  and  say  nothing,  and  firmly  avoid  opening.  The 
public  opinion  is  advancing.  It  is  coming  to  our  aid,  and 
will  force  the  institution  on  to  consummation.  The  numbers 
are  great,  and  many  from  great  distances,  who  visit  it  daily  as 
an  object  of  curiosity.  They  become  strengthened  if  friends, 
converted  if  enemies,  and  all  loud  and  zealous  advocates,  and 
will  shortly  give  full  tone  to  the  public  voice.  Our  motto  should 
be  "be  not  wearied  with  well-doing."  Accept  the  assurance 
of  my  affectionate  friendship  and  respect. 


TO    MESSRS.    RITCHIE    AND    GOOCH. 

MnvTicKiLO,  May  13,  1822. 

Messes.  Ritchie  and  Gooch, — I  am  thankful  to  you  for  the 
paper  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me,  containing  the  ar- 
raignment of  the  Presidents  of  the  United  States  generally,  as 
peculators  or  accessories  to  peculation,  by  an  informer  who 
masks  himself  under  the  signature  of  "  a  Native  Virginian." 
What  relates  to  myself  in  this  paper,  (being  his  No.  VI.,  and  the 
only  No.  I  have  seen)  I  had  before  read  in  the  "  Federal  Repub- 
lican" of  Baltimore,  of  August  28th,  which  was  sent  to  me  by  a 


240  JEFFEESON'S    WOPvKS. 

friend,  with  the  real  name  of  the  author.  It  was  published  there 
during  the  ferment  of  a  warmly-contested  election.  I  considered 
it,  therefore,  as  an  electioneering  manosuvre  merely,  and  did  not 
even  think  it  required  the  trouble  of  recollecting,  after  a  lapse 
of  thirty-three  years,  the  circumstances  of  the  case  in  which  he 
charges  me  with  having  purloined  from  the  treasury  of  the  Uni- 
ted States  the  sum  of  $1,148.  But  as  he  has  thought  it  worth 
repeating  in  his  Roll  of  informations  against  your  Presidents 
nominally,  I  shall  give  the  truths  of  the  case,  which  he  has  omit- 
ted, perhaps  because  he  did  not  know  them,  and  ventured  toe 
inconsiderately  to  supply  them  from  his  own  conjectures. 

On  the  return  from  my  mission  to  France,  and  joining  the 
government  here,  in  the  spring  of  1790,  I  had  a  long  and  heavy 
account  to  settle  with  the  United  States,  of  the  administration  of 
their  pecuniary  affairs  in  Eurojie,  of  which  the  superintendence 
had  been  confided  to  me  while  there.  I  gave  in  my  accoiint 
early,  but  the  pressure  of  other  business  did  not  jDermit  the  ac- 
counting officers  to  attend  to  it  till  October  10th,  1792,  when  we 
settled,  and  a  balance  of  $888  67  appearing  to  be  due  from  me, 
(but  erroneously  as  will  be  shown,)  I  paid  the  money  the  same 
day,  delivered  up  my  vouchers,  and  received  a  certificate  of  it. 
But  still  the  articles  of  my  draughts  on  the  bankers  could  be 
only  provisionally  Tpast ;  until  their  accounts  also  should  be  re- 
ceived to  be  confronted  with  mine.  And  it  was  not  till  the  24th 
of  June,  1804,  that  I  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  Richard  Har- 
rison the  auditor,  informing  me  "  that  my  accounts,  as  Minister 
to  France,  had  been  adjusted  and  closed,"  adding,  "the  bill 
drawn  and  credited  by  you  under  date  of  the  21st  of  October, 
1789,  for  banco  florins  2,800,  having  never  yet  appeared  in  any 
account  of  the  Dutch  bankers,  stand  at  your  debit  only  as  a  pro- 
visional charge.  If  it  should  hereafter  turn  out,  as  I  incline  to 
think  it  will,  that  this  bill  has  never  been  negotiated  or  used  by 
Mr.  Grand,  you  will  have  a  just  claim  on  the  public  for  its 
value."  This  was  the  first  intimation  to  me  that  I  had  too 
hastily  charged  myself  with  that  draught.  I  determined,  how- 
ever, as  I  had  allowed  it  in  my  account,  and  paid  up  the  balance 


COERESPUNDENOE.  241 

t  had  produced  against  me,  to  let  it  remain  awhile,  as  there 
Tfas  a  possibility  that  the  draught  might  still  he  presented  hy  the 
holder  to  the  bankers ;  and  so  it  remained  till  I  was  near  leaving 
Washington,  on  my  final  retirement  from  the  administration  in 
1809.  I  then  received  from  the  auditor,  Mr.  Harrison,  the  fol- 
lowing note  :  "  Mr.  Jefferson,  in  his  accounts  as  late  Minister  to 
France,  credited  among  other  sums,  a  bill  drawn  by  him  on  the 
21st  October,  1789,  to  the  order  of  Grand  &  Co.,  on  the  bankers 
of  the  United  States  at  Amsterdam,  f.  Banco  f.  2,800,  equal  with 
agio  to  current  florins  2,870,  and  which  was  charged  to  him  pro- 
visionally in  the  official  statement  made  at  the  Treasury,  in  the 
month  of  October,  1804.  But  as  this  bill  has  not  yet  been  no- 
ticed in  any  account  rendered  by  the  bankers,  the  presumption 
is  strong  that  it  was  never  negotiated  or  presented  for  payment, 
and  Mr.  Jefferson,  therefore,  appears  justly  entitled  to  receive  the 
value  of  it,  which,  at  forty  cents  the  gilder,  (the  rate  at  which  it 
was  estimated  in  the  above-mentioned  statement.)  amounts  to 
$1,148.    Auditor's  office,  January  24th,  1809." 

Desirous  of  leaving  nothing  unsettled  behind  me,  I  drew  the 
money  from  the  treasury,  but  without  any  interest,  although  I 
had  let  it  lie  there  twenty  years,  and  had  actually  on  that  error 
paid  $888  67,  an  apparent  balance  against  me,  when  the  true 
balance  was  in  my  favor  $259  33.  The  question  then  is,  how 
has  this  happened  ?  I  have  «xamined  minutely  and  can  state  it 
clearly. 

Turning  to  my  pocket  diary  I  find  that  on  the  21st  day  of 
October,  1789,  the  date  of  this  bill,  I  was  at  Cowes  in  England, 
on  my  return  to  the  United  States.  The  entry  in  my  diary  is  in 
these  words :  "  1789,  October  21st.  Sent  to  Grand  &  Co.,  letter 
of  credit  on  Willinks,  Yan  Staphorsts  and  Hubbard,  for  2,800 
florins  Banco."  And  I  immediately  credited  it  in  my  account 
with  the  United  States  in  the  following  words :  "  1789,  October 
21.  By  my  bill  on  Willinks,  Van  Staphorsts  and  Hubbard,  in 
favor  of  Grand  &  Co.,  for  2,800  florins,  equal  to  6,250  livres  IS 
sous."  My  account  having  been  kept  in  livres  and  sous  of  France, 
the  auditor  settled  this  sum  at  the  current  exchange,  making  it 

VOL.  vn.  16 


242  JEFFERSON'S   WOEKS. 

,^1,14S  This  bill,  drawn  at  Co-wes  in  England,  had  to  pass 
through  London  to  Paris  by  the  English  and  French  mails,  in 
which  passage  it  was  lost,  by  some  unknown  accident,  to  which 
it  was  the  more  exposed  in  the  French  mail,  by  the  confusion 
then  prevailing ;  for  it  was  exactly  at  the  time  that  martial  law 
was  proclaimed  at  Paris,  the  country  all  up  in  arms,  and  execu- 
tions by  the  mobs  were  daily  perpetrating  through  town  and 
country.  However  this  may  have  been,  the  bill  never  got  to  the 
hands  of  Grand  &  Co.,  was  never,  of  course,  forwarded  by  them 
to  the  bankers  of  Amsterdam,  nor  anything  more  ever  heard  of 
it.  The  auditor's  first  conjecture  then  was  the  true  one,  that  it 
never  was  negotiated,  nor  therefore  charged  to  the  United  States 
in  any  of  the  bankers'  accounts.  I  have  now  under  my  eye  a 
duplicate  furnished  me  by  Grand  of  his  account  of  that  date 
against  the  United  States,  and  his  private  account  against  my- 
self, and  I  affirm  that  he  has  not  noticed  this  bill  in  either  of 
these  accounts,  and  the  auditor  assures  us  the  Dutch  bankers  had 
never  charged  it.  The  sum  of  the  whole  then  is,  that  I  drew  a 
bill  on  the  United  States  bankers,  charged  myself  with  it  on  the 
presumption  it  would  be  paid,  that  it  never  was  paid  however, 
either  by  the  bankers  of  the  United  States,  or  anybody  else.  It 
was  surely  just  then  to  return  me  the  money  I  had  paid  for  it. 
Yet  "  the  Native  Virginian "  thinks  that  this  act  of  receiving 
back  the  money  I  had  thus  through  error  overpaid,  "ivas  a  pal- 
pable and  manifest  act  of  moral  turpitude,  about  which  no  two 
honest,  iinpartial  men  can  possibly  differ."  I  ascribe  these  hard 
expressions  to  the  ardor  of  his  zeal  for  the  public  good,  and  as 
they  contain  neither  argument  nor  proof,  I  pass  them  over  with- 
out observation.  Indeed,  I  have  not  been  in  the  habit  of  notic- 
ing these  morbid  ejections  of  spleen  either  with  or  without  the 
names  of  those  venting  them.  But  I  have  thought  it  a  duty  on 
the  present  occasion  to  relieve  my  fellow  citizens  and  my  coun- 
try from  the  degradation  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  to  which  this 
informer  is  endeavoring  to  reduce  it  by  representing  it  as  gov- 
erned hitherto  by  a  succession  of  swindlers  and  peculators.  Nor 
shall  I  notice  any  further  endeavors  to  prove  or  to  palliate  this 


OORRESPONDENCE.  243 

palpable  misinformation.  I  am  too  old  and  inert  to  undertake 
minute  investigations  of  intricate  transactions  of  the  last  century ; 
■  and  I  am  not  afraid  to  trust  to  the  justice  and  good  sense  of  my 
fellow-citizens  on  future,  as  on  former  attempts  to  lessen  me  in 
their  esteem. 

I  ask  of  you,  gentlemen,  the  insertion  of  this  letter  in  your  pa- 
per ;  and  I  trust  that  the  printers  who  have  hazarded  the  publica- 
tion of  the  libel,  on  anonymous  authority,  will  think  that  of  the 
answer  a  moderate  retribution  of  the  wrong  to  which  they  have 
been  accessory. 


TO  JOHN  ADAMS. 

MoNTicELLO,  June  1,  1822. 

It  is  very  long,  my  dear  Sir,  since  I  have  written'to  you.  My 
dislocated  wrist  is  now  become  so  stiff  that  I  write  slow  and 
with  pain,  and  therefore  write  as  little  as  I  can.  Yet  it  is  due 
to  mutual  friendship  to  ask  once  in  awhile  how  we  do  ?  The 
papers  tell  us  that  General  Starke  is  oflf  at  the  age  of  93.  Charles 
Thomson  still  lives  at  about  the  same  age,  cheerful,  slender  as  a 
grasshopper,  and  so  much  without  memory  that  he  scarcely  rec- 
ognizes the  members  of  his  household.  An  intimate  friend  of 
his  called  on  him  not  long  since ;  it  was  difficult  to  make  him 
recollect  who  he  was,  and,  sitting  one  hour,  he  told  him  the 
same  story  four  times  over.     Is  this  life  ? 

"  With  lab'ring  step 
To  tread  our  former  footsteps  ?  pace  the  round 
Eternal  ? — to  beat  and  beat 
The  beaten  track  ?  to  see  what  we  have  seen, 
To  taste  the  tasted  ?  o'er  our  palates  to  decant 
Another  vintage  ?" 

It  is  at  most  but  the  life  of  a  cabbage ;  surely  not  worth  a  wish. 
When  all  our  faculties  have  left,  or  are  leaving  us,  one  by  one, 
sight,  hearing,  memory,  every  avenue  of  pleasing  sensation  is 
closed,  and  athumy,  debility  and  malaise  left  in  their  places,  when 


244  JEFFEESON'S   WORKS. 

friends  of  our  youth  are  all  gone,  and  a  generation  is  risen  around 
us  whom  we  know  not,  is  death  an  evil  ? 

When  one  by  one  our  ties  are  torn, 

And  friend  from  friend  is  snatched  forlorn, 

When  man  is  left  alone  to  mourn, 

Oh !  then  hew  sweet  it  is  to  die  I 
When  trembling  limbs  refuse  their  weight, 
And  films  slow  gathering  dim  the  sight, 
When  clouds  obscure  the  mental  light 

'Tis  nature's    kindest  boon  to  die ! 

I  really  think  so.  I  have  ever  dreaded  a  doting  old  age ;  and 
my  health  has  been  generally  so  good,  and  is  now  so  good,  that 
I  dread  it  still.  The  rapid  decline  of  my  strength  during  the  last 
winter  has  made  me  hope  sometimes  that  I  see  laiid.  During 
summer  I  enjoy  its  temperature,  but  I  shudder  at  the  approach 
of  winter,  and  wish  I  could  sleep  through  it  with  the  Dormouse, 
and  only  wake  with  him  in  spring,  if  ever.  They  say  that 
Starke  could  walk  about  his  room.  I  am  told  you  walk  well 
and  firmly.  I  can  only  reach  my  garden,  and  that  with  sensible 
fatigue.  I  ride,  however,  daily.  But  reading  is  my  delight.  I 
should  wish  never  to  put  pen  to  paper ;  and  the  more  because  of 
the  treacherous  practice  some  people  have  of  publishing  one's  let- 
ters without  leave.  Lord  Mansfield  declared  it  a  breach  of  trust, 
and  punishable  at  law.  I  think  it  should  be  a  penitentiary  felo- 
ny ;  yet  you  will  have  seen  that  they  have  drawn  me  out  into  the 
arena  of  the  newspapers ;  although  I  know  it  is  too  late  for  me  to 
buckle  on  the  armor  of  youth,  yet  my  indignation  would  not  per- 
mit me  passively  to  receive  the  kick  of  an  ass. 

To  turn  to  the  news  of  the  day,  it  seems  that  the  Cannibals 
of  Europe  are  going  to  eating  one  another  again.  A  war  be- 
tween Russia  and  Turkey  is  like  the  battle  of  the  kite  and 
snake.  Whichever  destroys  the  other,  leaves  a  destroyer  the 
less  for  the  world.  This  pugnacious  humor  of  mankind  seems 
to  be  the  law  of  his  nature,  one  of  the  obstacles  to  too  great  mul- 
tiplication provided  in  the  mechanism  of  the  Universe.  The 
cocks  of  the  henyard  kill  one  another  up.    Bears,  bulls,  rams,  do 


CORRESPONDENCE.  245 

the  same.  And  the  horse,  in  his  wild  state,  kills  all  the  young 
males,  until  worn  down  with  age  and  war,  some  vigorous  youth 
kills  him,  and  takes  to  himself  the  Harem  of  females.  I  hope 
we  shall  prove  how  much  happier  for  man  the  Q,uaker  policy  is, 
and  that  the  life  of  the  feeder,  is  better  than  that  of  the  fighter ; 
and  it  is  some  consolation  that  the  desolation  by  these  maniacs 
of  one  part  of  the  earth  is  the  means  of  improving  it  in  other 
parts.  Let  the  latter  be  our  office,  and  let  us  milk  the  cow, 
while  the  Russian  holds  her  by  the  horns,  and  the  Turk  by  the 
tail.  God  bless  you,  and  give  you  health,  strength,  and  good 
spirits,  and  as  much  of  life  as  you  think  worth  having. 


TO    EEV.    ME.    WHITTEMOEE. 

MoNTiCELio, -Tune  5,  1822. 

I  thank  you.  Sir,  for  the  pamphlets  you  have  been  so  kind  as 
to  send  me,  and  am  happy  to  learn  that  the  doctrine  of  Jesus 
that  there  is  but  one  God,  is  advancing  prosperously  among  our 
fellow  citizens.  Had  his  doctrines,  pure  as  they  came  from  him- 
self, been  never  sophisticated  for  unworthy  purposes,  the  whole 
civilized  world  would  at  this  day  have  formed  but  a  single  sect. 
You  ask  my  opinion  on  the  items  of  doctrine  in  your  catechism. 
I  have  never  permitted  myself  to  meditate  a  specified  creed. 
These  formulas  have  been  the  bane  and  ruin  of  the  Christian 
church,  its  own  fatal  invention,  which,  through  so  many  ages, 
made  of  Christendom  a  slaughter-house,  and  at  this  day  divides 
it  into  casts  of  inextinguishable  hatred  to  one  another.  Witness 
the  present  internecine  rage  of  all  other  sects  against  the  Unita- 
rian. The  religions  of  antiquity  had  no  particular  formulas  of 
creed.  Those  of  the  modern  world  none,  except  those  of  the  re- 
ligionists calling  themselves  Christians,  and  even  among  these 
the  Quakers  have  none.  And  hence,  alone,  the  harmony,  the 
quiet,  the  brotherly  aflfections,  the  exemplary  and  unschismatising 
society  of  the  Friends,  and  I  hope  the  Unitarians,  will  follow  their 
happy  example.     With   thtse  sentiments  of  the  mischiefs  of 


246  JEFFEE.SON'S   WORKS. 

creeds  and  confessions  of  faith,  I  am  sure  you  will  excuse  mv 
not  giving  opinions  on  the  items  of  any  particular  one  ;  and  that 
you  will  accept,  at  the  same  time,  the  assurance  of  the  high  re- 
spect and  consideration  which  I  bear  to  its  author. 


TO    MESSES.    RITCHIE    AND    GOOCH. 

MoNTicELLO,  June  10,  1822. 

Messrs.  Ritchie  and  Gooch, — In  my  letter  to  you  of  May 
13th,  in  answer  to  a  charge  by  a  person  signing  himself  "  A  Na- 
tive Virginian,"  that  on  a  bill  drawn  by  me  for  a  sum  equivalent 
to  $1,148,  the  treasury  of  the  United  States  had  made  double 
payment,  I  supposed  I  had  done  as  much  as  would  be  required 
when  I  showed  they  had  only  returned  to  me  money  which  I 
had  previously  paid  into  the  treasury  on  the  presumption  that 
such  a  bill  had  been  paid  for  me,  but  that  this  bill  being  lost  or 
destroyed  on  the  way,  had  never  been  presented,  consequently 
never  paid  by  the  United  States,  and  that  the  money  was  there- 
fore returned  to  me.  This  being  too  plain  for  controversy,  the 
pseudo  Native  of  Virginia,  in  his  reply.  No.  32,  in  the  Federal 
Republican  of  May  24th,  reduces  himself  ultimately  to  the  ground 
of  a  double  receipt  of  the  money  by  me,  first  on  sale  or  negotia- 
tion of  the  bill  in  Europe,  and  a  second  time  from  the  treasury. 
But  the  bill  was  never  sold  or  negotiated  anywhere.  It  was  not 
drawn  to  raise  money  in  the  market.  I  sold  it  to  nobody,  received 
no  money  on  it,  but  enclosed  it  to  Grand  &  Co.  for  some  pur- 
pose of  account,  for  what  particular  purpose  neither  my  memory, 
after  a  lapse  of  thirty-three  years,  nor  my  papers  enable  me  tc 
say.  Had  I  preserved  a  copy  of  my  letter  to  Grand  enclosing  the 
bill,  that  would  doubtless  have  explained  the  purpose.  But  it 
was  drawn  on.  the  eve  of  my  embarkation  with  my  family  from 
Cowes  for  America,  and  probably  the  hurry  of  preparation  for 
that  did  not  allow  me  time  to  take  a  copy.  I  presume  this  be- 
cause I  find  no  such  letter  among  my  papers.  Nor  does  any  sub- 
sequent correspondence  with  Grand  explain  it,  because  I  had  no 


COEEESPONDENOE.  247 

private  account  with  him ;  my  account  as  minister  being  kept 
with  the  treasury  directly,  so  that  he,  receiving  no  intimation  of 
this  bill,  could  never  give  me  notice  of  its  miscarriage.  But, 
however  satisfactory  might  have  been  an  explanation  of  the  pur- 
pose of  the  bill,  it  is  unnecessary  at  least ;  the  material  fact  being 
established  that  it  never  got  to  hand,  nor  was  ever  paid  by  the 
United  States. 

And  how  does  the  Native  Virginian  maintain  hL'i  charge  that 
I  received  the  cash  when  I  drew  the  bilj.  ?  by  unceremoniously 
inserting  into  the  entry  of  that  article  in  my  account,  words  of 
his  own,  making  me  say  in  direct  terms  that  I  did  receive  the 
cash  for  the  bill.  In  my  account  rendered  to  the  treasury,  it  is 
entered  in  these  words  :  "  1789,  Oct.  1.  By  my  bill  on  Willincks, 
Van  Staphorsts  &  Hubbard  in  favor  of  Grand  &  Co.  for  2,800 
florins,  equal  to  6,230  livres  18  sous ;"  but  he  quotes  it  as  stated 
in  my  account  rendered  to  and  settled  at  the  treasury,  and  yet 
remaining,  as  it  is  to  be  presumed,  among  the  archives  of  that 
department,  "  By  cash  received  of  Grmid  for  bill  on  Willincks, 
&c."  Now  the  words  "  cash  received  of  Grand "  constitute 
"the  very  point,  the  pivot,  on  which  the  matter  turns,"  as  him- 
self says,  and  not  finding,  he  has  furnished  them.  Although  the 
interpolation  of  them  is  sufficiently  refuted  by  the  fact  that  Grand 
was,  at  the  time,  in  France,  and  myself  in  England,  yet  wishing 
that  conviction  of  the  interpolation  should  be  founded  on  official 
document,  I  wrote  to  the  auditor,  Mr.  Harrison,  requesting  an 
official  certificate  of  the  very  words  in  which  that  article  stood 
in  my  autograph  account  deposited  in  the  office.  I  received  yes- 
terday his  answer  of  the  3d,  in  which  he  says,  "  I  am  unable  to 
furnish  the  extract  you  require,  as  the  original  account  rendered 
by  you  of  your  pecuniary  transactions  of  a  public  nature  in  Eu- 
rope, together  with  the  vouchers  and  documents  connected  with 
it,  were  all  destroyed  in  the  Register's  office  in  the  memorable 
conflagration  of  1814.  With  respect,  therefore,  to  the  sum  of 
$1,148  in  question,  I  can  only  say  that,  after  full  and  repeated 
examinations,  I  considered  you  as  most  righteously  and  justly 
entitled  to  receive  it.     Otherwise,  it  will,  I  trust,  be  believed  that 


248  JEFFERSON'S   WOEKS. 

I  could  not  have  consented  to  the  re-payment."  Considering  the 
intimacy  which  the  Native  Virginian  shows  with  the  treasury 
affairs,  we  might  he  justified  in  suspecting  that  he  knew  this 
fact  of  the  destruction  of  the  original  by  fire  when  he  ventured 
to  misquote.  But  certainly  we  may  call  on  him  to  say,  and  to 
show,  from  what  original  he  copied  these  words :  "  cash  received 
from  Grand  "?  I  say,  most  assuredly,  from  none,  for  none  such 
ever  existed.  Although  the  original  be  lost,  which  would  have 
convicted  him  officially,  it  happens  that  when  I  made  from  my 
rough  draft  a  fair  copy  of  my  account  for  the  treasury,  I  took 
also,  with  a  copying-machine,  a  press-copy  of  every  page,  which 
I  kept  for  my  own  use.  It  is  known  that  copies  by  this  well- 
known  machine  are  taken  by  impression  on  damp  paper  laid  on 
the  face  of  the  written  page  while  fresh,  and  passed  between 
rollers  as  copper  plates  are.  They  must  therefore  be  true  fac 
similies.  This  press-copy  now  lies  before  me,  has  .been  shown 
to  several  persons,  and  will  be  shown  to  as  many  as  wish  or  are 
willing  to  examine  it ;  and  this  article  of  my  account  is  entered  in 
it  in  these  words :  "  1789,  Oct.  1.  By  my  bill  on  Willincks,  Van 
Staphorsts  &  Hubbard  for  2,800  florins,  equal  to  6,230  livres  18 
sous."  An  inspection  of  the  account,  too,  shows  that  whenever 
I  received  cash  for  a  bill,  it  is  uniformly  entered  "  by  cash  re- 
ceived of  such  an  one,  (fcc.  ;"  but  where  a  bill  was  drawn  to  con- 
stitute an  item  of  account  only,  the  entry  is  "  by  my  bill  on, 
&c."  Now  to  these  very  words  "  cash  received  of  Grand,"  not 
in  my  original  but  interpolated  by  himself,  he  constantly  appeals 
as  proofs  of  an  acknowledgment  under  my  own  hand  that  /  re- 
ceived the  cash.  In  proof  of  this,  I  must  request  patience  to  read 
the  following  quotations  from  his  denunciations  as  standing  in 
the  Federal  Republican  of  May  24  : 

Page  2,  column  2, 1.  48  to  29  from  the  bottom,  "  he  [Mr.  J.] 
admits  in  his  account  rendered  in  1790  and  settled  in  1792,  that 
he  had  received  the  '  cash,''  [placing  the  word  cash  between  in- 
verted commas  to  have  it  marked  particularly  as  a  quotation] 
that  he  had  received  the  '  casK  for  the  bill  in  question,  and  he 
iocs  not  directly  deny  it  now.     Will  he,  can  he,  in  the  face  of 


CORRESPONDENCE.  249 

his  own  declaration  in  writing  to  the  contrary,  publicly  say  that 
he  did  not  receive  the  money  for  this  bill  in  Europe  ?  This  is 
the  point  on  which  the  whole  matter  rests,  the  pivot  on  which 
the  arguments  turn.  If  he  did  receive  the  money  in  Europe, 
(no  matter  whether  at  Cowes  or  at  Paris,)  he  certainly  had  no 
right  to  receive  it  a  second  time  from  the  public  treasury  of  the 
United  States.  This  is  admitted  I  believe  on  all  sides.  Now, 
that  he  did  receive  the  money  in  Europe  on  this  bill,  is  proved 
by  the  acknowledgrhent  of  the  receiver  himself,  who  credits  the 
amount  in  his  account  as  settled  at  the  treasury  thus :  "  cash  re- 
ceived of  Grand  for  bill  on  Willincks,  Van  Staphorsts,  2,876 
gilders,  1,148  dollars. 

Col.  3,  1.  28  to  21  from  bottom.  There  is  a  plain  diiference 
in  the  phraseology  of  the  account,  from  which  an  extract  is 
given  by  Mr.  J.  as  above,  and  that  which  he  rendered  to  the  Trea- 
sury. In  the  former  he  gives  the  credit  thus,  "  Bjr  my  bills  on 
Willincks,"  &c.  In  the  latter  he  states,  "  By  cash  received  of 
Grand  for  bill  on  Willincks,  &c."  There  is  a  difference,  indeed, 
as  he  states  it,  but  it  is  made  solely  by  his  own  interpolation. 

Col.  3, 1.  8,  from  bottom.  "  That  Mr.  Jefferson  ^ould,  in  the 
very  teeth  of  the  facts  of  the  evidence  before  us,  and  in  his  own 
breast,  gravely  say  that  he  had  paid  the  money  for  this  bill,  and 
that  therefore  it  was  but  just  to  return  him  the  amount  of  it, 
when  he  had,  by  his  own  acknowledgm,ent,  sent  it  to  Grand  & 
Co.,  and  received  the  m,oney  for  it,  is,  I  confess,  not  only  matter 
of  utter  astonishment  but  regret."  I  spare  myself  the  qualifica- 
tions which  these  paragraphs  may  merit,  leaving  them  to  be  ap- 
plied by  every  reader  according  to  the  feelings  they  may  excite 
in  his  own  breast. 

He  proceeds :  "  And  now  to  place  this  case  beyond  the  reach 
of  cavil  or  doubt,  and  to  show  mA)st  conclusively  that  he  had 
negotiated  this  bill  in  Europe,  and  received  the  cash  for  it  there, 
and  that  such  was  the  understanding  of  the  matter  at  the  treasury 
in  1809,  when  he  received  the  money."  These  are  his  own  ■ 
words.  Col.  4,  he  brings  forward  the  overwhelming  fact  "  not 
hitherto  made  public  but  stated  from  the  most  creditable  and  au- 


250  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

thentic  source,  that  one  of  the  accounting  officers  of  the  treasury 
suggested  in  writing  the  propriety  of  taking  bond  and  security 
from  Mr.  J.,  for  indemnification  of  the  United  States  against  any 
future  claim  on  this  bill.  But  it  seems  the  bond  was  not  taken, 
and  the  government  is  now  liable  in  law,  and  in  good  faith  for 
the  payment  of  this  bill  to  the  rightful  owner."  How  this  sug- 
gestion of  taking  bond  at  the  treasury,  so  solemnly  paraded,  is 
more  conclusive  proof  than  his  own  interpolation,  that  the  cash 
was  received,  I  am  so  dull  as  not  to  perceive  ;  but  I  say,  that  had 
the  suggestion  been  made  to  me,  it  would  have  been  instantly 
complied  with.  But  I  deny  his  law.  Were  the  bill  now  to  be 
presented  to  the  treasmy,  the  answer  would  and  should  be  the 
same  as  a  merchant  would  give  :  "  You  have  held  up  this  bill 
three  and  thirty  years  without  notice  ;  we  have  settled  in  the 
meantime  with  the  drawer,  and  have  no  effects  of  his  left  in  our 
hands.  Apply  to  him  for  payment."  On  his  application  to  me, 
I  should  first  inquire  into  the  history  of  the  bill ;  where  it  had 
been  lurking  for  three  and  thirty  years  ?  how  came  he  by  it  ?  by 
interception  ?  by  trover  ?  by  assignment  from  Grand  ?  by  pur- 
chase ?  from  whom,  when  and  where  ?  And  according  to  his 
answers  I  should  either  institute  criminal  process  against  him,  or 
if  he  showed  that  all  was  fair  and  honest,  I  should  pay  him  the 
money,  and  look  for  reimbursement  to  the  quarter  appearing 
liable.  The  law  deems  seven  years'  absence  of  a  man,  without 
being  heard  of,  such  presumptive  evidence  of  his  death,  as  to 
distribute  his  estate,  and  to  allow  his  wife  to  marry  again.  The 
Auditor  thought  that  twenty  years  non-appearance  of  a  bill 
which  had  been  risked  through  the  post-offices  of  two  nations, 
was  sufficient  presumption  of  its  loss.  But  this  self-styled  native 
of  Virginia  thinks  that  the  thirty-three  years  now  elapsed  are 
not  sufficient.  Be  it  so.  If  the  accounting  officers  of  the  treas- 
ury have  any  uneasiness  on  that  subject,  I  am  ready  to  ^  give  a 
bond  of  indemnification  to  the  United  States  in  any  sum  the 
ofiicers  will  name,  and  with  the  security  which  themselves 
shall  approve.  Will  this  satisfy  the  native  Virginian  ?  or  will 
he  now  try  to  pick  some  other  hole  in  this  transaction,  to  shield 


CORRESPONDENCE.  251 

nimself  from  a  candid  acknowledgment,  that  in  making  up  his 
case,  he  suppUed  hy  gratuitous  conjectures,  the  facts  which  were 
not  within  his  knowledge,  and  that  thus  he  has  sinned  against 
truth  in  his  declarations  before  the  public  ?  Be  this  as  it  may, 
I  have  so  much  confidence  in  the  discernment  and  candor  of  my 
fellow-citizens,  as  to  leave  to  their  judgment,  and  dismiss  from 
my  own  notice  any  future  torture  of  words  or  circumstances 
which  this  writer  may  devise  for  their  deception.  Indeed,  could 
such  a  denunciation,  and  on  such  proof,  bereave  me  of  that  con- 
fidence and  consolation,  I  should,  through  the  remainder  of  life, 
brood  over  the  afilicting  belief  that  I  had  lived  and  labored  in 
vain. 


TO    MR.    GOODENOW. 

MoNTicELLO,  June  13,  1822. 

Sir, — I  thank  you  for  the  volume  of  American  Jurisprudence, 
which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me.  I  am  now  too  old 
to  read  books  solidly,  unless  they  promise  present  amusement  or 
future  benefit.  To  me  books  of  law  offer  neither.  But  I  read 
your  6th  chapter  with  interest  and  satisfaction,  on  the  question 
whether  the  common  law  (of  England)  makes  a  part  of  the  laws 
of  our  general  government  ?  That  it  makes  more  or  less  a  part 
of  the  laws  of  the  States  is,  I  suppose,  an  unquestionable  fact. 
Not  by  birthright,  a  conceit  as  inexplicable  as  the  trinity,  but  by 
adoption.  But,  as  to  the  general  government,  the  Virginia  Re- 
port on  the  alien  and  sedition  laws,  has  so  completely  pulverized 
this  pretension  that  nothing  new  can  be  said  on  it.  Still,  seeing 
that  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court,  (I  recollect,  for  example.  Els- 
worth  and  Story)  had  been  found  capable  of  such  paralogism,  I 
was  glad  to  see  that  the  Supreme  Court  had  given  it  up.  In  the 
case  of  Libel  in  the  United  States  district  Court  of  Connecticut, 
the  rejection  of  it  was  certainly  sound ;  because  no  law  of  the 
general  government  had  made  it  an  offence.  But  such  a  case 
might,  I  suppose,  be  sustained  in  the  State  Courts  which  have 
state  laws  against  libels.     Because  as  to  the  portions  of  power 


252  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

within  each  State  assigned  to  the  general  government,  the  Presi- 
dent is  as  much  the  Executive  of  the  State,  as  their  particular 
governor  is  in  relation  to  State  powers.  These,  however,  are 
speculations  with  which  I  no  longer  trouble  myself ;  and  there- 
fore, to  my  thanks,  I  will  only  add  assurances  of  my  great  res- 
pect. 


TO    DOCTOR   BENJAMIN    WATEBHOUSE. 

MoNTioELLO,  June  26,  1822 

Dear  Sir, — I  have  received  and  read  with  thankfulness  and 
pleasure  your  denunciation  of  the  abuses  of  tobacco  and  wine. 
Yet,  however  sound  in  its  principles,  I  expect  it  will  be  but  a 
sermon  to  the  wind.  You  will  find  it  is  as  difficult  to  inculcate 
these  sanative  precepts  on  the  sensualities  of  the  present  day,  as 
to  convince  an  Athanasian  that  there  is  but  one  God.  I  wish 
success  to  both  attempts,  and  am  happy  to  learn  from  you  tkat 
the  latter,  at  least,  is  making  progress,  and  the  more  rapidly  in 
proportion  as  our  Platonizing  Christians  make  more  stir  and  noise 
about  it.  The  doctrines  of  Jesus  are  simple,  and  tend  all  to  the 
happiness  of  man. 

1.  That  there  is  one  only  God,  and  he  all  perfect. 

2.  That  there  is  a  future  state  of  rewards  and  punishments. 

3.  That  to  love  God  with  all  thy  heart  and  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself,  is  the  sum  of  religion.  These  are  the  great  points  on 
which  he  endeavored  to  reform  the  religion  of  the  Jews.  But 
compare  with  these  the  demoralizing  dogmas  of  Calvin. 

1.  That  there  are  three  Gods. 

2.  That  good  works,  or  the  love  of  our  neighbour,  are  nothing. 

3.  That  faith  is  every  thing,  and  the  more  incomprehensible 
the  proposition,  the  more  merit  in  its  faith. 

4.  That  reason  in  religion  is  of  unlawful  use.  • 

5.  That  God,  from  the  beginning,  elected  certain  individuals 
to  be  saved,  and  certain  others  to  be  damned  ;  and  that  no  crimes 
of  the  former  can  damn  them  ;  no  virtues  of  the  latter  save. 

Now,  which  of  these  is  the  true  and  charitable  Christian  ?  He 


OOERESFONDENOE.  253 

who  believes  and  acts  on  the  simple  doctrines  of  Jesus  ?  .  Or  the 
impious  dogmatists,  as  Athanasius  and  Calvin  ?  Verily  I  say 
these  are  the  false  shepherds  foretold  as  to  enter  not  by  the  door 
into  the  sheepfold,  but  to  climb  up  some  other  way.  They  are 
mere  usurpers  of  the  Christian  name,  teaching  a  counter-religion 
made  up  of  the  deliria  of  crazy  imaginations,  as  foreign  from 
Christianity  as  is  that  of  Mahomet.  Their  blasphemies  have 
driven  thinking  men  into  infidelity,  who  have  too  hastily  reject- 
ed the  supposed  author  himself,  with  the  horrors  so  falsely  im- 
puted to  him.  Had  the  doctrines  of  Jesus  been  preached  always 
as  pure  as  they  came  from  his  lips,  the  whole  civilized  world 
would  now  have  been  Christian.  I  rejoice  that  in  this  blessed 
country  of  free  inquiry  and  belief,  which  has  surrendered  its 
creed  and  conscience  to  neither  Kings  nor  priests,  the  genuine 
doctrine  of  one  only  God  is  reviving,  and  I  trust  that  there  is  not 
a  young  man  now  living  in  the  United  States  who  will  not  die 
an  Unitarian. 

But  much  I  fear,  that  when  this  great  truth  shall  be  re-estab- 
lished, its  votaries  will  fall  into  the  fatal  error  of  fabricating  for- 
mulas of  creed  and  confessions  of  faith,  the  engines  which  so 
soon  destroyed  the  religion  of  Jesus,  and  made  of  Christendom  a 
mere  Aceldama ;  that  they  will  give  up  morals  for  mysteries,  and 
Jssus  for  Plato.  How  much  wiser  are  the  Q,uakers,  who,  agree- 
ing in  the  fundamental  doctrines  of  the  gospel,  schismatize  about 
no  mysteries,  and,  keeping  within  the  pale  of  common  sense, 
suffer  no  speculative  differences  of  opinion,  any  more  than  of 
feature,  to  impair  the  love  of  their  brethren.  Be  this  the  wisdom 
of  Unitarians,  this  the  holy  mantle  which  shall  cover  within  its 
charitable  circumference  all  who  believe  in  one  God,  and  who 
love  their  neighbor !  I  conclude  my  sermon  with  sincere  assur- 
ances of  ray  friendly  esteem  and  respect. 


254  JEFFEESON'S   "WORKS. 


TO    JOHN   ADAMS. 

MoNTiCELLO,  June  2*7,  1822. 

Dear  Sik, — Your  kind  letter  of  the  11th  has  given  me  great 
satisfaction.  For  although  I  could  not  doubt  but  that  the  hand 
of  age  was  pressing  heavily  on  you,  as  on  myself,  yet  we  like  to 
know  the  particulars  and  the  degree  of  that  pressure.  Much  re- 
flectiin  too,  has  been  produced  by  your  suggestion  of  lending 
my  letter  of  the  1st,  to  a  printer.  I  have  generally  great  aver- 
sion to  the  insertion  of  my  letters  in  the  public  papers ;  because 
of  my  passion  for  quiet  retirement,  and  never  to  be  exhibited  in 
scenes  on  the  public  stage.  Nor  am  I  unmindful  of  the  pre- 
cept of  Horace,  ''  solvere  senescentem,  mature  sanus  equum,  ne 
peccet  ad  extremum  ridendus."  In  the  present  case,  however,  I 
see  a  possibility  that  this  might  aid  in  producing  the  very  quiet 
after  which  I  pant.  I  do  not  know  how  far  you  may  suffer,  as 
I  do,  under  the  persecution  of  letters,  of  which  every  mail  brings 
a  fresh  load.  They  are  letters  of  inquiry,  for  the  most  part,  al- 
ways of  good  will,  sometimes  from  friends  whom  I  esteem,  but 
much  oftener  from  persons  whose  names  are  unknown  to  me, 
but  written  kindly  and  civilly,  and  to  which,  therefore,  civihty 
requires  answers.  Perhaps,  the  better  known  failure  of  your 
hand  in  its  function  of  writing,  may  shield  you  in  greater  degree 
from  this  distress,  and  so  far  qualify  the  misfortune  of  its  disabili- 
ty. I  happened  to  turn  to  my  letter-list  some  time  ago,  and  a 
curiosity  was  excited  to  count  those  received  in  a  single  year. 
It  was  the  year  before  the  last.  I  found  the  number  to  be  one 
thousand  two  hundred  and  sixty-seven,  many  of  them  requiring 
answers  of  elaborate  research,  and  all  to  be  answered  with  due 
attention  and  consideration.  Take  an  average  of  this  number 
for  a  week  or  a  day,  and  I  will  repeat  the  question  suggested  by 
other  considerations  in  mine  of  the  1st.  Is  this  life  ?  At  best  it 
is  but  the  life  of  a  mill-horse,  who  sees  no  end  to  his  circle  but 
in  death.  To  such  a  life,  that  of  a  cabbage  is  paradise.  It  oc- 
curs then,  that  my  condition  of  existence,  truly  stated  in  that 
letter,  if  better  known,  might  check  the  kind  indiscretions  which 


COBEESPONDENOE.  255 

are  so  heavily  oppressing  the  departing  hours  of  life.  Such  a  re- 
lief would,  to  me,  be  an  ineffable  blessing.  But  yours  of  the 
11th,  equally  interesting  and  affecting,  should  accompany  that  to 
which  it  is  an  answer.  The  two,  taken  together,  would  excite 
a  joint  interest,  and  place  before  our  fellow-citizens  the  present 
condition  of  two  ancient  servants,  who  having  faithfully  per- 
formed their  forty  or  fifty  campaigns,  stipendiis  omnibus  expletis, 
have  a  reasonable  claim  to  repose  from  all  disturbance  in  the 
sanctuary  of  invalids  and  superannuates.  But  some  device  should 
be  thought  of  for  their  getting  before  the  public  otherwise  than 
by  our  own  publication.  Your  printer,  perhaps,  could  frame 
something  plausible.  ********'s  name  should  be  left  blank,  as 
his  picture,  should  it  meet  his  eye,  might  give  him  pain.  I  con- 
sign, however,  the  whole  subject  to  your  consideration,  to  do  in 
it  whatever  your  own  judgment  shall  approve,  and  repeat  always, 
with  truth,  the  assurance  of  my  constant  and  affectionate  friend- 
ship and  respect. 


TO    WILLIAM    T.    BAHRT. 

MoNTiCELLO,  July  2,  1822. 

SiE, — Your  favor  of  the  15th  of  June  is  received,  and  I  am 
very  thankful  for  the  kindness  of  its  expressions  respecting  my- 
self. But  it  ascribes  to  me  merits  which  I  do  not  claim.  I  was 
only  of  a  band  devoted  to  the  cause  of  independence,  all  of  whom 
exerted  equally  their  best  endeavors  for  its  success,  and  have  a 
common  right  to  the  merits  of  its  acquisition.  So  also  is  the 
civil  revolution  of  1801.  Yery  many  and  very  meritorious  were 
the  worthy  patriots  who  assisted  in  bringing  back  our  govern- 
ment to  its  republican  tack.  To  preserve  it  in  that,  will  require 
unremitting  vigilance.  Whether  the  sun-ender  of  our  opponents, 
their  reception  into  our  camp,  their  assumption  of  our  name,  and 
apparent  accession  to  our  objects,  may  strengthen  or  weaken  the 
genuine  principles  of  republicanism,  may  be  a  good  or  an  evil,  is 
yet  to  be  seen.     I  consider  the  party  division  of  whig  and  tory 


256  JEFFERSON'S   "WORKS. 

the  most  wholesome  which  can  exist  in  any  government,  and 
well  worthy  of  being  nourished,  to  keep  out  those  of  a  more  dan- 
gerous character.  We  already  see  the  power,  installed  for  life, 
responsible  to  no  authority,  (for  impeachment  is  not  even  a  scare- 
crow,) advancing  with  a  noiseless  and  steady  pace  to  the  great 
object  of  consolidation.  The  foundations  are  already  deeply  laid 
by  their  decisions,  for  the  annihilation  of  constitutional  State 
rights,  and  the  removal  of  every  check,  every  counterpoise  to  the 
ingulphing  power  of  which  themselves  are  to  make  a  sovereign 
part.  If  ever  this  vast  country  is  brought  under  a  single  govern- 
ment, it  will  be  one  of  the  most  extensive  corruption,  indifferent 
and  incapable  of  a  wholesome  care  over  so  wide  a  spread  of  sur- 
face. This  will  not  be  borne,  and  you  will  have  to  choose  be- 
tween reformation  and  revolution.  If  I  know  the  spirit  of  this 
country,  the  one  or  the  other  is  inevitable.  Before  the  canker  is 
become  inveterate,  before  its  venom  has  reached  so  much  of  the 
body  politic  as  to  get  beyond  control,  remedy  should  be  applied. 
Let  the  future  appointments  of  judges  be  for  four  or  six  years, 
and  renewable  by  the  President  and  Senate.  This  will  bring 
their  conduct,  at  regular  periods,  under  revision  and  probation, 
and  may  keep  them  in  equipoise  between  the  general  and  special 
governments.  We  have  erred  in  this  point,  by  copying  England, 
where  certainly  it  is  a  good  thing  to  have  the  judges  independent 
of  the  King.  But  we  have  omitted  to  copy  their  caution  also, 
which  makes  a  judge  removable  on  the  address  of  both  legislative 
Houses.  That  there  should  be  public  functionaries  independent 
of  the  nation,  whatever  may  be  their  demerit,  is  a  solecism  in  a. 
republic,  of  the  first  order  of  absurdity  and  inconsistency. 

To  the  printed  inquiries  respecting  our  schools,  it  is  not  in  my 
power  to  give  an  answer.  Age,  debility,  an  ancient  dislocated, 
and  now  stiffened  wrist,  render  writing  so  slow  and  painful,  that 
I  am  obliged  to  decline  everything  possible  requiring  writing. 
An  act  of  our  legislature  will  inform  you  of  our  plan  of  primary 
schools,  and  the  annual  reports  show  that  it  is  becoming  com- 
pletely abortive,  and  must  be  abandoned  very  shortly,  after  cost- 
ing us  to  this  day  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  dollars,  and 


CORRESPONDENCE.  257 

yet  to  cost  us  forty-five  thousand  dollars  a  year  more  until  it 
shall  be  discontinued  ;  and  if  a  single  boy  has  received  the  ele- 
ments of  common  education,  it  must  be  in  some  part  of  the  coun- 
try not  known  to  me.  Experience  has  but  too  fully  confirmed 
the  early  predictions  of  its  fate.  But  on  this  subject  I  must  re- 
fer you  to  others  more  able  than  I  am  to  go  into  the  necessary 
details ;  and  I  conclude  with  the  assurances  of  my  great  esteem 
and  respect. 


TO    DOCTOB,    WATERHOUSE. 

MfhVTiCEi.LO,  July  19,  1822. 

Deae  SiK, — An  anciently  dislocated,  and  now  stiffening  wrist, 
makes  writing  an  operation  so  slow  and  painful  to  me,  that  I 
should  not  so  soon  have  troubled  you  with  an  acknowledgment 
of  your  favor  of  the  8th,  but  for  the  request  it  contained  of  my 
consent  to  the  publication  of  my  letter  of  June  the  26th.  No, 
my  dear  Sir,  not  for  the  world.  Into  what  a  nest  of  hornets 
would  it  thrust  my  head  !  the  getiiis  irritable  vatum,  on  whom 
argument  is  lost,  and  reason  is,  by  themselves,  disclaimed  in 
matters  of  religion.  Don  Quixote  undertook  to  redress  the 
bodily  wrongs  of  the  world,  but  the  redressment  of  mental  va- 
garies would  be  an  enterprise  more  than  Quixotic.  J  should  as 
soon  undertake  to  bring  the  crazy  skulls  of  Bedlam  to  sound  un- 
derstanding, as  inculcate  reason  into  that  of  an  Athanasian.  I 
am  old,  and  tranquility  is  now  my  sunimum  bonum.  Keep  me, 
therefore,  from  the  fire  and  faggots  of  Calvin  and  his  victim  Ser- 
Vbtus.  Happy  in  the  prospect  of  a  restoration  of  primitive  Chris- 
tianity, I  must  leave  to  younger  athletes  to  encounter  and  lop 
off  the  false  branches  which  have  been  engrafted  into  it  by  the 
mythologists  of  the  middle  and  modern  ages.  I  am  not  aware 
of  the  peculiar  resistance  to  Unitarianism,  which  you  ascribe  to 
Pennsylvania.  When  I  lived  in  Philadelphia,  there  was  a  res- 
pectable congregation  of  that  sect,  with  a  meeting-house  and 
regular  service  which  I  attended,  and  in  which  Doctor  Priestley 

VOL.    Vll.  17 


258  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

officiated  to  numerous  audiences.  Baltimore  has  one  or  two 
churches,  and  their  pastor,  author  of  an  inestimable  book  on  this 
subject,  was  elected  chaplain  to  the  late  Congress.  That  doc- 
trine has  not  yet  been  preached  to  us :  but  the  breeze  begins  to 
be  felt  which  precedes  the  storm ;  and  fanaticism  is  all  in  a 
bustle,  shutting  its  doors  and  windows  to  keep  it  out.  But  it 
will  come,  and  drive  before  it  the  foggy  mists  of  Platonisni  which 
have  so  long  obscured  our  atmosphere.  I  am  in  hopes  that  some 
of  the  disciples  of  your  institution  will  become  missionaries  to  us, 
of  these  doctrines  truly  evangelical,  and  open  our  eyes  to  what 
has  been  so  I'^ng  hidden  from  them.  A  bold  and' eloquent 
preacher  would  be  nowhere  listened  to  with  more  freedom  than 
in  this  State,  nor  with  more  firmness  of  mind.  They  might  need 
a  preparatory  discourse  on  the  text  of  "  prove  all  things,  hold 
fast  that  which  is  good,"  in  order  to  unlearn  the  lesson  that  reason 
IS  an  unlawful  guide  in  religion.  They  might  startle  on  being 
first  awaked  from  the  dreams  of  the  night,  but  they  Avould  rub 
their  eyes  at  once,  and  look  the  spectres  boldly  in  the  face.  The 
preacher  might  be  excluded  by  our  hierophants  from  their  churches 
and  meeting-houses,  but  would  be  attended  in  the  fields  by  whole 
acres  of  hearers  and  thinkers.  Missionaries  from  Cambridge 
would  soon  be  greeted  with  more  welcome,  than  from  the  tritheis- 
tical  school  of  Andover.  Such  are  my  wishes,  such  would  be 
my  welcomes,  warm  and  cordial  as  the  assurances  of  my  esteem 
and  respect  for  you. 


TO    MR.    THOMAS    SKIDMAN. 

.\l()NTK'n.M,o,  Ang-ii-^t  '29,  1822. 

You  must  be  so  good,  Sir,  as  to  excuse  me  from  entering  into 
the  optical  investigation  which  your  letter  of  the  18th  proposes- 
The  hand  of  age  presses  heavily  on  me.  I  have  long  withdrawn 
my  mind  from  speculations  of  that  kind  ;  my  memory  is  on  the 
wane.  I  am  averse  even  to  close  thinking,  and  writing  is  be- 
.;ome  slow,  laborious  and  painful.     I  will  make  then  but  a  single 


OORRESPOXDENOE.  259 

suggestion  on  the  subject  of  your  proposition,  to  show  my  respect 
o  your  request. 

To  distinct  vision  it  is  necessary  not  only  that  the  visual  angle 
should  be  sufficient  for  the  powers  of  the  human  eye,  but  that 
there  should  be  sufficient  light  also  on  the  object  of  observatior. 
In  microscopic  observations,  the  enlargement  of  the  angle  of 
vision  may  be  more  indulged,  because  auxiliary  light  may  be 
concentrated  on  the  object  by  concave  mirrors.  But  in  the  case 
of  the  heavenly  bodies,  we  can  have  no  such  aid.  The  moon, 
for  example,  receives  from  the  sun  but  a  fixed  quantity  of  light. 
In  proportion  as  you  magnify  her  surface,  you  spread  that  fixed 
quantity  over  a  greater  space,  dilute  it  more,  and  render  the  ob- 
ject more  dim.  If  you  increase  her  magnitude  infinitely,  you 
dim  her  face  infinitely  also,  and  she  becomes  invisible.  When 
under  total  eclipse,  all  the  direct  rays  of  the  sim  being  intercepted, 
she  is  seen  but  faintly,  and  would  not  be  seen  at  all  but  for  the 
refraction  of  the  solar  rays  in  their  passage  through  our  atmos- 
phere. In  a  night  of  extreme  darkness,  a  house  or  a  mountain 
is  not  seen,  as  not  having  light  enough  to  impress  the  limited 
sensibility  of  our  eye.  I  do  suppose  in  fact  that  Herschel  has 
availed  himself  of  the  properties  of  the  parabolic  mirror  to  the 
point  beyond  which  its  effect  would  be  countervailed  by  the 
diminution  of  light  on  the  object.  I  barely  suggest  this  element, 
not  presented  to  view  in  your  letter,  as  one  which  must  enter 
into  the  estimate  of  the  improved  telescope  you  propose.  You 
will  receive  from  the  professional  mathematicians  whom  you 
have  consulted,  remarks  more  elaborate  and  profound,  and  must 
be  so  good  as  to  accept  mine  merely  as  testimonies  of  my  respect. 


TO    MR.    GEORGE    F.    HOPKINS. 

MoN'TicKi.i.o,  Seplomber  5,  1S2?. 

Sir, — Your  letter  of  August  — ,  was  received  a  few  days  ago. 
Of  all  the  departments  of  science  no  one  seems  to  have  been  less 
advanced  for  the  last  hundred  years  than  that  of  meteorology. 


260  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

The  new  chemistry  indeed  has  given  us  a  new  principle  of  the 
generation  of  rain,  by  proving  water  to  be  a  composition  of  differ- 
ent gases,  and  has  aided  our  theory  of  meteoric  lights.  Elec- 
tricity stands  where  Dr.  Franklin's  early  discoveries .  placed  it, 
except  with  its  new  modification  of  galvanism.  Bat  the  phe- 
nomena of  snow,  hail,  halo,  aurora  borealis,  haze,  looming,  &c., 
are  as  yet  very  imperfectly  understood.  I  am  myself  an  empiric 
m  natural  philosophy,  suffering  my  faith  to  go  no  further  than 
my  facts.  I  am  pleased,  however,  to  see  the  efforts  of  hypothet- 
ical speculation,  because  by  the  collisions  of  different  hypothe- 
ses, truth  may  be  elicited  and  science  advanced  in  the  end. 
This  sceptical  disposition  does  not  permit  me  to  say  whether 
your  hypothesis  for  looming  and  the  floating  volumes  of  warm 
air  occasionally  perceived,  may  or  may  not  be  confirmed  by  fu- 
ture observations.  More  facts  are  yet  wanting  to  furnish  a  solu- 
tion on  which  we  may  rest  with  confidence.  I  even  doubt  as 
yet  whether  the  looming  at  sea  and  at  land  are  governed  by  the 
same  laws.  In  this  state  of  uncertainty,  I  cannot  presume  either 
to  advise  or  discourage  the  publication  of  your  essay.  This 
must  depend  on  circumstances  of  which  you  must  be  abler  to 
judge  yourself,  and  therefore  I  return  the  paper  as  requested, 
with  assurances  of  my  great  respect. 


TO    MR.    CHILES    TERRIL. 

MoN-noKLLo,  Septembei-  25,  1822. 

Sir, — I  received  on  the  20th,  your  letter  of  the  13th,  on  the 
question  what  is  an  east  and  west  line  ?  which,  you  say,  has 
been  a  subject  of  discussion  in  the  newspapers.  I  presume,  how- 
ever, it  must  have  been  a  mere  question  of  definition,  and  that 
the  parties  have  differed  only  in  applying  the  same  appellation  to 
different  things.  The  one  defines  an  east  and  west  line  to  be  on 
a  great  circle  of  the  earth,  passing  through  the  point  of  departure, 
its  nadir  point,  and  the  centre  of  the  earth,  its  plane  rectangular, 
to  that  of  the  meridian  of  departure.     The  other  considers  an 


CORRESPONDENCE.  261 

east  and  "west  line  to  be  a  line  on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  bound- 
ing a  plane  at  right-angles  with  its  axis,  or  a  circle  of  latitude 
passing  through  the  point  of  departure,  or  in  other  words,  a  line 
which,  from  the  point  of  departure,  passes  every  meridian  at  a 
right-angle.  Each  party,  therefore,  defining  the  line  he  means, 
may  be  permitted  to  call  it  an  east  and  west  one,  or  at  least  it 
becomes  no  longer  a  mathematical  but  a  philological  question 
of  the  meaning  of  the  words  east  and  west.  The  last  is  what 
was  meant  probably  by  the  east  and  west  line  in  the  treaty  of 
Ghent.  The  same  has  been  the  understanding  in  running  the 
numerous  east  and  west  lines  which  divide  our  different  States. 
They  have  been  run  by  observations  of  latitude  at  very  short  in- 
tervals, uniting  the  points  of  observation  by  short  direct  lines,  and 
thus  constituting  in  fact  part  of  a  polygon  of  very  short  sides. 

But,  Sir,  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  an  arbiter  of  these  learned 
questions  ;  age  has  weaned  me  from  such  speculations,  and  ren- 
dered me  as  incompetent  as  unwilling  to  puzzle  myself  with 
them.  Your  claim  on  me  as  a  quondam  neighbor  has  induced 
me  to  hazard  thus  much',  not  indeed  for  the  newspapers,  a  vehicle 
to  which  I  am  never  willingly  committed,  but  to  prove  my  atten- 
tion to  your  wishes,  and  to  convey  to  you  the  assurances  of  my 
respect. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFEESON. 

MoNTKziLui,  October  15,  1822. 

Dear  Sik, — I  have  long  entertained  scruples  about  writing  this 
letter,  upon  a  subject  of  some  delicacy.  But  old  age  has  over- 
come them  at  last. 

You  remember  the  four  ships  ordered  by  Congress  to  be  built, 
and  the  four  captains  appointed  by  Washington,  Talbot,  and 
Truxton,  and  Barry,  &c.,  to  carry  an  ambassador  to  Algiers,  and 
protect  our  commerce  in  the  Mediterranean.  I  have  always  im 
puted  this  measure  to  you,  for  several  reasons.  First,  because 
you  frequently  proposed  it  to  me  while  we  were  at  Paris,  nego- 
tiating together  for  peace  with  the  Barbary  powers.     Secondly, 


262  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

because  I  knew  that  Washington  and  Hamilton  were  not  only 
indifferent  about  a  navy,  but  averse  to  it.  There  was  no  Secre- 
tary of  the  Navy ;  only  four  Heads  of  department.  You  were 
Secretary  of  State  ;  Hamilton,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  ;  Knox. 
Secretary  of  War ;  and  I  believe  Bradford  was  Attorney  Gen- 
eral. I  have  always  suspected  that  you  and  Knox  were  in  favor 
of  a  navy.  If  Bradford  was  so,  the  majority  was  clear.  But 
Washington,  I  am  confident,  was  against  it  in  his  judgment. 
But  his  attachment  to  Knox,  and  his  deference  to  yonr  opinion, 
for  I  know  he  had  a  great  regard  for  you,  might  induce  him  to 
decide  in  favor  of  you  and  Knox,  even  though  Bradford  united 
with  Hamilton  in  opposition  to  you.  That  Hamilton  was  averse 
'£)  the  measure,  I  have  personal  evidence  ;  for  while  it  was  pend- 
ing, he  came  in  a  hurry  and  a  fit  of  impatience,  to  make  a  visit 
to  me.  He  said  he  was  likely  to  be  called  upon  for  a  large  sum 
of  money  to  build  ships  of  war,  to  fight  the  Algerines,  and  he 
asked  my  opinion  of  the  measure.  I  answered  him  that  I  was 
clearly  in  favor  of  it.  For  I  had  always  been  of  opinion,  from 
the  commencement  of  the  revolution,  that  a  navy  was  the  most 
powerful,  the  safest  and  the  cheapest  national  defence  for  this 
country.  My  advice,  therefore,  was,  that  as  much  of  the  revenue 
as  could  possibly  be  spared,  should  be  applied  to  the  building  and 
equipping  of  ships.  The  conversation  was  of  some  length,  but  it 
was  manifest  in  his  looks  and  in  his  air,  that  he  was  disgusted 
at  the  measure,  as  well  as  at  the  opinion  that  I  had  expressed. 

Mrs.  Knox  not  long  since  wrote  a  letter  to  Doctor  Waterhouse, 
requesting  him  to  procure  a  commission  for  her  son,  in  the  navy ; 
that  navy,  says  her  ladyship,  of  which  his  father  was  the  parent. 
'■  For,"  says  she,  "  I  have  frequently  heard  General  Washington 
say  to  my  husband,  the  navy  was  your  child."  I  have  always 
believed  it  to  be  Jefferson's  child,  though  Knox  may  have  assist- 
ed in  ushering  it  into  the  world.  Hamilton's  hobby  was  the 
army.  That  Washington  was  averse  to  a  navy,  I  had  full  proof 
from  his  own  lips,  in  many  different  conversations,  some  of  them 
of  length,  in  which  he  always  insisted  that  it  was  only  building 


CORRESPONDENCE.  263 

and  arming  ships  for  the  English.     "  Si  quid  novisti  rectiiis  istin 
candidus  imperii  ;  si  non,  his  utere  inecwm." 

If  I  am  in  error  in  any  particular,  pray  correct  your  humble 
servant 


TO    ME.    CORNELIUS    CAMDEN    BLATCHLT. 

MiiNTii  KLLii,  October  '21,  1322 

Sir, — I  return  thanks  for  the  pamphlet  you  have  been  so  kind 
as  to  send  me  on  the  subject  of  commonwealths.  Its  moral  prin- 
ciples merit  entire  approbation,  its  philanthropy  especially,  and 
its  views  of  the  equal  rights  of  man.  That,  on  the  principle  of  a 
communion  of  property,  small  societies  may  exist  in  habits  of 
virtue,  order,  industry,  and  peace,  and  consequently  in  a  state  of 
as  much  happiness  as  heaven  has  been  pleased  to  deal  out  to  im- 
perfect humanity,  I  can  readily  conceive,  and  indeed,  have  seen 
its  proofs  in  various  small  societies  which  have  been  constituted 
on  that  principle.  But  I  do  not  feel  authorized  to'  conclude  from 
these  that  an  extended  society,  like  that  of  the  United  States,  or 
of  an  individual  State,  could  be  governed  happily  on  the  same 
principle.  I  look  to  the  diffusion  of  light  and  education  as  the 
resource  most  to  be  relied  on  for  ameliorating  the  condition,  pro- 
moting the  virtue,  and  advancing  the  happiness  of  man.  That 
every  man  shall  be  made  virtuous,  by  any  process  whatever,  is, 
indeed,  no  more  to  be  expected,  than  that  every  tree  shall  be 
made  to  bear  fruit,  and  every  plant  nom-ishment.  The  brier  and 
bramble  can  never  become  the  vine  and  olive  ;  but  their  asperi- 
ties may  be  softened  by  culture,  and  their  properties  improved  to 
usefulness  in  the  order  and  economy  of  the  world.  And  I  do 
hope  that,  in  the  present  spirit  of  extending  to  the  great  mass  of 
mankind  the  blessings  of  instruction,  I  see  a  prospect  of  great 
advancement  in  the  happiness  of  the  human  race ;  and  that  this 
may  proceed  to  an  indefinite,  although  not  to  an  infinite  degree. 
Wishing  every  success  to  the  views  of  your  society  which  their 
hopes  can  promise,  and  thanking  you  most  particularly  for  tne 


264  JEFFERSOF'S    WOEKS. 

kind  expressions  of  your  letter  towards  myself,  I  salute  you  •with 
assurances  of  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTicELLO,  November  1,  1822. 

Dear  Sir, — I  have  racked  my  memory  and  ransacked  my  pa- 
pers, to  enable  myself  to  answer  the  inquiries  of  your  favor  of 
October  the  15th ;  but  to  little  purpose.  My  papers  furnish 
me  nothing,  my  memory,  generalities  only.  I  know  that  while 
I  was  in  Europe,  and  anxious  about  the  fate  of  our  seafaring 
men,  for  some  of  whom,  then  in  captivity  in  Algiers,  we  were 
treating,  and  all  were  in  like  danger,  I  formed,  undoubtingly,  the 
opinion  that  our  government,  as  soon  as  practicable,  should  pro- 
vide a  naval  force  sufficient  to  keep  the  Barbary  States  in  order; 
and  on  this  subject  we  communicated  together,  as  you  observe. 
When  I  returned  to  the  United  States  and  took  part  in  the  ad- 
ministration under  General  Washington,  I  constantly  maintained 
that  opinion  ;  and  in  December,  1790,  took  advantage  of  a  refer- 
ence to  me  from  the  first  Congress  which  met  after  I  was  in  of- 
fice, to  report  in  favor  of  a  force  sufficient  for  the  protection  of 
our  Mediterranean  commerce  ;  and  I  laid  before  them  an  accurate 
statement  of  the  whole  Barbary  force,  public  and  private.  I 
think  General  Washington  approved  of  building  vessels  of  war  to 
that  extent.  General  Knox,  I  know,  did.  But  what  was  Colo- 
nel Hamilton's  opinion,  I  do  not  in  the  least  remember.  Your 
recollections  on  that  subject  are  certainly  corroborated  by  his 
known  anxieties  for  a  close  connection  with  Great  Britain,  to 
which  he  might  apprehend  danger  from  collisions  between  their 
vessels  and  ours.  Randolph  was  then  Attorney  General ;  but  his 
opinion  on  the  question  I  also  entirely  forget.  Some  vessels  of 
war  were  accordingly  built  and  sent  into  the  Mediterranean. 
The  additions  to  these  in  your  time,  I  need  not  note  to  you,  who 
are  well  known  to  have  ever  been  an  advocate  for  the  vooden 
walls  of  ThemistO(,les.  Some  of  those  you  added,  were  sold  un- 
ler  an  act  of  Congress  passed  while  you  were  in  office.    I  thought, 


COERESPONDENOE.  265 

afterwards,  that  the  public  safety  might  require  some  additional 
vressels  of  strength,  to  be  prepared  and  in  readiness  for  the  first 
moment  of  a  war,  provided  they  could  be  preserved  against  the 
decay  which  is  unavoidable  if  kept  in  the  water,  and  clear  of  the 
expense  of  officers  and  men.  With  this  view  I  proposed  that 
they  should  be  built  in  dry  docks,  above  the  level  of  the  tide 
waters,  and  covered  with  roofs.  I  further  advised,  that  places 
for  these  docks  should  be  selected  where  there  was  a  command 
of  water  on  a  high  level,  as  that  of  the  Tyber  at  Washington,  by 
which  the  vessels  might  be  floated  out,  on  the  principle  of  a  lock. 
But  the  majority  of  the  legislature  was  against  any  addition  to 
the  navy,  and  the  minority,  although  for  it  in  judgment,  voted 
against  it  on  a  principle  of  opposition.  We  are  now,  I  under- 
stand, building  vessels  to  remain  on  the  stocks,  under  shelter, 
until  wanted,  when  they  will  be  laimched  and  finished.  On  my 
plan  they  could  be  in  service  at  an  hour's  notice.  On  this,  the 
finishing,  after  launching,  will  be  a  work  of  time. 

This  is  all  I  recollect  about  the  origin  and  progress  of  our 
navy.  That  of  the  late  war,  certainly  raised  our  rank  and  char- 
acter among  nations.  Yet  a  navy  is  a  very  expensive  engine. 
It  is  admitted,  that  in  ten  or  twelve  years  a  vessel  goes  to  entire 
decay;  or,  if  kept  in  repair,  costs  as  much  as  would  build  a  new 
one ;  and  that  a  nation  who  could  count  on  twelve  or  fifteen 
years  of  peace,  would  gain  by  burning  its  navy  and  building  a 
new  one  in  time.  Its  extent,  therefore,  must  be  governed  by  cir- 
cumstances. Since  my  proposition  for  a  force  adequate  to  the 
piracies  of  the  Mediterranean,  a  similar  necessity  has  arisen  in 
our  own  seas  for  considerable  addition  to  that  force.  Indeed,  I 
wish  we  could  have  a  convention  with  the  naval  powers  of  Eu- 
rope, for  them  to  keep  down  the  pirates  of  the  Mediterranean, 
and  the  slave  ships  on  the  coast  of  Africa,  and  for  us  to  perform 
the  same  duties  for  the  society  of  nations  in  our  seas.  In  this 
way,  those  collisions  would  be  avoided  between  the  vessels  of 
war  of  different  nations,  which  beget  wars  and  constitute  the 
weightiest  objection  to  navies.  I  salute  you  with  constant  af- 
fection and  respect. 


266  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 


TO  DOCTOR  COOPEE. 

MoNTuiELLo,  November  2.  1822. 

Dear  Sir, — Your  favor  of  October  the  18th  came  to  hand 
yesterday.  The  atmosphere  of  our  country  is  unquestionably 
charged  with  a  threatening  cloud  of  fanaticism,  lighter  in  somb 
parts,  denser  in  others,  but  too  heavy  in  all.  I  had  no  idea,  how- 
ever, that  in  Pennsylvania,  the  cradle  of  toleration  and  freedom 
of  religion,  it  could  have  arisen  to  the  height  you  describe.  This 
must  be  owing  to  the  growth  of  Presbyterianism.  The  blasphe- 
my and  absurdity  of  the  five  points  of  Calvin,  and  the  impossi- 
bility of  defending  them,  render  their  advocates  impatient  of  rea- 
soning, irritable,  and  prone  to  denunciation.  In  Boston,  how- 
ever, and  its  neighborhood,  Unitarianism  has  advanced  to  so 
great  strength,  as  now  to  humble  this  haughtiest  of  all  religious 
sects ;  insomuch,  that  they  condescend  to  interchange  with  them 
and  the  other  sects,  the  civilities  of  preaching  freely  and  frequent- 
ly in-each  others'  meeting  houses.  In  Rhode  Island,  on  the  other 
hand,  no  sectarian  preacher  will  permit  an  Unitarian  to  pollute 
his  desk.  In  our  Richmond  there  is  much  fanaticism,  but  chief- 
ly among  the  women.  They  have  their  night  meetings  and 
praying  parties,  where,  attended  by  their  priests,  and  sometimes 
by  a  hen-pecked  husband,  they  pour  forth  the  effusions  of  their 
love  to  Jesus,  in  terms  as  amatory  and  carnal,  as  their  modesty 
would  permit  them  to  use  to  a  mere  earthly  lover.  In  our  village 
of  Charlottesville,  there  is  a  good  degree  of  religion,  with  a  small 
spice  only  of  fanaticism.  We  have  four  sects,  but  without  either 
church  or  meeting-house.  The  court-house  is  the  common  tem- 
ple, one  Sunday  in  the  month  to  each.  Here,  Episcopalian  and 
Presbyterian,  Methodist  and  Baptist,  meet  together,  join  in  hymn- 
ing their  Maker,  listen  with  attention  and  devotion  to  each  others' 
preachers,  and  all  mix  in  society  with  perfect  harmony.  It  is 
not  so  in  the  districts  where  Presbyterianism  prevails  undivided- 
ly.  Their  ambition  and  tyranny  would  tolerate  no  rival  if  they 
had  power.  Systematical  in  grasping  at  an  ascendency  over  all 
other  sects,  they  aim,  like  the  Jesuits,  at  engrossing  the  educa- 


COREESPONDENOE.  267 

tion  of  the  country,  are  hostile  to  every  institatioii  which  hey 
do  not  direct,  and  jealous  at  seeing  others  begin  to  attend  at  all 
to  that  object.  The  diffusion  of  instruction,  to  which  there  is 
now  so  growing  an  attention,  will  be  the  remote  remedy  to  this 
fever  of  fanaticism ;  while  the  more  proximate  one  will  be  the 
progress  of  Unitarianism.  That  this  will,  ere  long,  be  the  reli- 
gion of  the  majority  from  north  to  south,  I  have  no  doubt. 

In  our  university  you  know  there  is  no  Professorship  of  Divin- 
ity. A  handle  has  been  made  of  this,  to  disseminate  an  idea 
that  this  is  an  institution,  not  merely  of  no  religion,  but  against 
all  religion.  Occasion  was  taken  at  the  last  meeting  of  the  Vis- 
itors, to  bring  forward  an  idea  that  might  silence  this  calumny, 
which  weighed  on  the  minds  of  some  honest  friends  to  the  in- 
stitution. In  our  annual  report  to  the  legislature,  after  stating 
the  constitutional  reasons  against  a  public  establishment  of  any 
religious  instruction,  we  suggest  the  expediency  of  encouraging 
the  different  religious  sects  to  establish,  each  for  itself,  a  professor- 
ship of  their  own  tenets,  on  the  confines  of  the  university,  so  near 
as  that  their  students  may  attend  the  lectures  there,  and  have  the 
free  use  of  our  library,  and  every  other  accommodation  we  can 
give  them  ;  preserving,  however,  their  independence  of  us  and  of 
each  other.  This  fills  the  chasm  objected  to  ours,  as  a  defect  in 
an  institution  professing  to  give  instruction  in  all  useful  sciences. 
I  think  the  invitation  will  be  accepted,  by  some  sects  from  candid 
intentions,  and  by  others  from  jealousy  and  rivalship.  And  by 
bringing  the  sects  together,  and  mixing  them  with  the  mass  of 
other  students,  we  shall  soften  their  asperities,  liberalize  and  neu- 
tralize their  prejudices,  and  make  the  general  religion  a  religion 
of  peace,  reason,  and  morality. 

The  time  of  opening  our  university  is  still  as  uncertain  as 
ever.  All  the  pavilions,  boarding  houses,  and  dormitories  are 
done.  Nothing  is  now  wanting  but  the  central  building  for  a 
library  and  other  general  pm-poses.  For  this  we  have  no  funds, 
and  the  last  legislature  refused  all  aid.  We  have  better  hopes  of 
the  next.  But  all  is  uncertain.  I  have  heard  with  regret  of 
disturbances  on  the  part  of  the  students  in  your  seminary.     The 


268  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

article  of  discipline  is  the  most  diffioilt  in  American  education 
Premature  ideas  of  independence,  too  little  repressed  by  parents 
beget  a  spirit  of  insubordination,  which  is  the  great  obstacle  tc 
science  with  us,  and  a  principal  cause  of  its  decay  since  the  rev- 
olution. I  look  to  it  with  dismay  in  our  institution,  as  a  breaker 
ahead,  which  I  am  far  from  being  confident  we  shall  be  able  to 
weather.  The  advance  of  age,  and  tardy  pace  of  the  public  pa- 
tronage, may  probably  spare  me  the  pain  of  witnessing  conse- 
quences. 

I  salute  you  with  constant  friendship  and  respect. 


TO    JOHN    CAMPBELL,  ESQ,. 

MoNTioELLo,  Novembev  10,  1822. 

Sib, — I  have  to  acknowledge  your  favor  of  the  4th  instant, 
which  gives  me  the  first  information  I  had  ever  received  that  the 
laurels  which  Colonel  Campbell  so  honorably  won  in  the  battle 
of  King's  Mountain,  had  ever  been  brought  into  question  by  any 
one.  To  him  has  been  ever  ascribed  so  much  of  the  success  of 
that  brilliant  action  as  the  valor  and  conduct  of  an  able  com- 
mander might  justly  claim.  This  lessens  nothing  the  merits  of 
his  companions  in  arms,  ofl[icers  and  soldiers,  who,  all  and  every 
one,  acted  well  their  parts  in  their  respective  stations.  I  have  no 
papers  on  this  subject  in  my  possession,  all  such  received  at  that 
day  having  belonged  to  the  records  of  the  council,  but  I  remem- 
ber well  the  deep  and  grateful  impression  made  on  the  mind  of 
every  one  by  that  memorable  victory.  It  was  the  joyful  annun- 
ciation of  that  turn  of  the  tide  of  success  which  terminated  the 
revolutionary  war  with  the  seal  of  our  independence.  The 
slighting  expression  complained  of,  as  hazarded  by  the  venerable 
Shelby,  might  seem  inexcusable  in  a  younger  man,  but  he  was 
then  old,  and  I  can  assure  you,  dear  Sir,  from  mortifying  experi- 
ence, that  the  lapses  of  memory  of  an  old  man  are  innocent  sub- 
jects of  compassion  more  than  of  blame.  The  descendants  of 
Colonel  Campbell  may  rest  thek  heads  quietly  on  the  pillow  of 


CORRESPONDENCE.  269 

his  reaown.  History  has  consecrated,  and  will  forever  preserve 
it  in  the  faithful  annals  of  a  grateful  country.  With  the  express- 
ions of  the  high  sense  I  entertain  of  his  character,  accept  the  as- 
surance to  youi'self  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 

P.  S.  I  received  at  the  same  time  with  your  letter,  one  from 
Mr.  William  C.  Preston,  on  the  same  subject.     Writing  is  so  slow 
and  painful  to  me,  that  I  must  pray  you  to  make  for  me  my  ac 
knowledgments  to  him,  and  my  request  that  he  will  consider  this 
as  an  answer  to  his  as  well  as  your  favor. 


TO    JAMES    SMITH. 

N'oNTici-XLO.  December  8.  18'2'2. 

SiE, — I  have  to  thank  you  for  your  pamphlets  on  the  subject 
of  Unitarianism,  and  to  express  my  gratification  with  your  efforts 
for  the  revival  of  primitive  Christianity  in  your  quarter.  No  his- 
torical fact  is  better  established,  than  that  the  doctrine  of  one 
God,  pure  and  uncompounded,  was  that  of  the  early  ages  of 
Christianity  ;  and  was  among  the  efficacious  doctrines  which 
gave  it  triumph  over  the  polytheism  of  the  ancients,  sickened 
with  the  absurdities  of  their  own  theology.  Nor  was  the  unity 
of  the  Supreme  Being  ousted  from  the  Christian  creed  by  the 
force  of  reason,  but  by  the  sword  of  civil  government,  wielded 
at  the  will  of  the  fanatic  Athanasius.  The  hocus-pocus  phan- 
tasm of  a  God  like  another  Cerberus,  with  one  body  and  three 
heads,  had  its  birth  and  growth  in  the  blood  of  thousands  and 
thousands  of  martyrs.  And  a  strong  proof  of  the  solidity  of  the 
primitive  faith,  is  its  restoration,  as  soon  as  a  nation  arises  which 
vindicates  to  itself  the  freedom  of  religious  opinion,  and  its  ex- 
ternal divorce  from  the  civil  authority.  The  pure  and  simple 
unity  of  the  Creator  of  the  universe,  is  now  all  but  ascendant  in 
the  eastern  States  ;  it  is  dawning  in  the  west,  and  advancing  to- 
wards the  south  ;  and  I  confidently  expect  that  the  present  gen- 
eration will  see  Unitariaxiism  become  the  general  religion  of  the 


270  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

United  States.  The  eastern  presses  are  giving  us  many  excel- 
lent pieces  on  the  subject,  and  Priestley's  learned  -writings  on  it 
are,  or  should  be,  in  every  hand.  In  fact,  the  Athanasian  para- 
dox that  one  is  three,  and  three  but  one,  is  so  incomprehensible' 
to  the  human  mind,  that  no  candid  man  can  say  he  has  any  idea 
of  it,  and  how  can  he  believe  what  presents  no  idea  ?  He  who 
thinks  he  does,  only  deceives  himself.  He  proves,  also,  that 
man,  once  surrendering  his  reason,  has  no  remaining  guard  against 
absurdities  the  most  monstrous,  and  like  a  ship  without  rudder, 
is  the  sport  of  every  wind.  With  such  persons,  gullabihty, 
which  they  call  faith,  takes  the  helm  from  the  hand  of  reason, 
and  the  mind  becomes  a  wreck. 

I  write  with  freedom,  because,  while  I  claim  a  right  to  believe 
in  one  God,  if  so  my  reason  tells  me,  I  yield  as  freely  to  others 
that  of  believing  in  three.  Both  religions,  I  find,  make  honest 
men,  and  that  is  the  only  point  society  has  any  right  to  look  to. . 
Although  this  mutual  freedom  should  produce  mutual  indulgence, 
yet  I  wish  not  to  be  brought  in  question  before  the  public  on  this 
or  any  other  subject,  and  I  pray  you  to  consider  me  as  writing 
under  that  trust.  I  take  no  part  in  controversies,  religious  or  po- 
litical. At  the  age  of  eighty,  tranquillity  is  the  greatest  good  of 
life,  and  the  strongest  of  our  desires  that  of  dying  in  the  good 
will  of  all  mankind.  And  with  the  assurance  of  all  my  good 
will  to  Unitarian  and  Trinitarian,  to  Whig  and  Tory,  accept  for 
yourself  that  of  my  entire  respect. 


TO    MB.    EDWARD    EVERETT. 

Mdntickt.i.o,  February  2'),  1823. 

Dear  Sib, — I  have  read  with  much  satisfaction  the  reply  of 
Mr.  Everett,  your  brother,  to  the  criticisms  on  his  work  on  the 
ftate  of  Europe,  and  concur  with  him  generally  in  the  doctrines 
of  the  reply.  Certainly  provisions  are  not  allowed,  by  the  con- 
sent of  nations,  to  be  contraband  but  where  everything  is  so,  as 
in  the  case  of  a  blockaded  town,  with  which  all  intercourse  is 


CORRESPONDENCE.  271 

forbidden.  On  the  question  whether  the  principle  of  "free  bot- 
toms making  free  goods,  and  enemy  bottoms  enemy  goods,"  is 
now  to  be  considered  as  established  in  the  law  of  nations,  I  will 
state  to  you  a  fact  within  my  own  knowledge,  which  may  lessen 
the  weight  of  om*  authority  as  having  acted  in  the  war  of  Prance 
and  England  on  the  ancient  principle  "  that  the  goods  of  an 
enemy  in  the  bottom  of  a  friend  are  lawful  prize  ;  while  those 
of  a  friend  in  an  enemy  bottom  are  not  so."  England  became  a 
party  in  the  general  war  against  France  on  the  1st  of  February, 
1793.  We  took  immediately  the  stand  of  neutrality.  We  were 
aware  that  our  great  intercourse  with  these  two  maritime  nations 
would  subject  us  to  harassment  by  multiplied  questions  on  the 
duties  of  neutrality,  and  that  an  important  and  early  one  would 
be  which  of  the  two  principles  above  stated  should  be  the  law 
of  action  with  us  ?  We  wished  to  act  on  the  new  one  of  "  free 
bottoms  free  goods;"  and  we  had  established  it  in  our  treaties 
with  other  nations,  but  not  with  England.  We  determined 
therefore  to  avoid,  if  possible,  committing  ourselves  on  this  ques- 
tion until  we  could  negotiate  with  England  her  acquiescence  in 
the  new  principle.  Although  the  cases  occurring  were  mr- 
merous,  and  the  ministers,  Genet  and  Hammond,  eagerly  on  the 
watch,  we  were  able  to  avoid  any  declaration  until  the  massacre 
of  St.  Domingo.  The  whites,  on  that  occasion,  took  refuge  on 
board  our  ships,  then  in  their  harbor,  with  all  the  property  they 
could  find  room  for  ;  and  on  their  passage  to  the  United  States, 
many  of  them  were  taken  by  British  cruisers,  and  their  cargoes 
seized  as  lawful  prize.  The  inflammable  temper  of  Genet  kin- 
dled at  once,  and  he  wrote,  with  his  usual  passion,  a  letter  re- 
claiming an  observance  of  the  principle  of "  free  bottoms  free 
goods,"  as  if  already  an  acknowledged  law  of  neutrality.  I 
pressed  him  in  conversation  not  to  urge  this  point ;  that  although 
it  had  been  acted  on  by  convention,  by  the  armed  neutrahty, 
it  was  not  yet  become  a  principle  of  universal  admission  ;  that 
we  wished  indeed  to  strengthen  it  by  our  adoption,  and  were  ne- 
gotiating an  acquiescence  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain :  but  if 
forced  to  decide  prematurely,  we  must  justify  ourselves  by  a 


272  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

declaration  of  the  ancient  principle,  and  that  no  general  consenl 
of  nations  had  as  yet  changed  it.  He  was  immoveable,  and  on 
the  25th  of  July  wrote  a  letter,  so  insulting,  that  nothing  but  a 
determined  system  of  justice  and  moderation  would  have  pre- 
vented his  being  shipped  home  in  the  first  vessel.  I  had  the 
day  before  answered  his  of  the  9th,  in  which  I  had  been  obliged 
in  our  own  justification,  to  declare  that  the  ancient  was  the  es- 
tablished principle,  still  existing  and  authoritative.  Our  denial, 
therefore,  of  the  new  principle,  and  action  on  the  old  one,  wore 
forced  upon  us  by  the  precipitation  and  intemperance  of  Genet, 
against  our  wishes,  and  against  our  aim  ;  and  our  involuntary 
practice,  therefore,  is  of  less  authority  against  the  new  rule. 

I  owe  you  particular  thanks  for  the  copy  of  you;:  translation 
of  Buttman's  Greek  Grammar,  which  you  have  been  so  kind  as 
to  send  me.  A  cursory  view  of  it  promises  me  a  rich  mine  of 
valuable  criticism.  I  observe  he  goes  with  the  herd  of  gram- 
marians in  denying  an  Ablative  case  to  the  Greek  language.  I 
cannot  concur  with  him  in  that,  but  think  with  the  Messrs. 
of  Port  Royal  who  admit  an  Ablative.  And  why  exclude  it? 
Is  it  because  the  Dative  and  Ablative  in  Greek  are  always  of  the 
same  form  ?  Then  there  is  no  Ablative  to  the  Latin  plurals,  be- 
cause in  them  as  in  Greek,  these  case's  are  always  in  the  same 
form.  The  Greeks  recognized  the  Ablative  under  the  appellation 
of  the  niuKfu  ixpuioFfixi/,  which  I  have  met  with  and  noted  from 
some  of  the  scholiasts,  without  recollecting  where.  Stephens, 
Scapula,  Hederic  acknowledge  it  as  one  of  the  significations  of 
the  word  uif^uiut/ntuxo..  That  the  Greeks  used  it  cannot  be  denied, 
For  one  of  multiplied  examples  which  may  be  produced  take  the 
following  from  the  Hippolyttis  of  Euripides:  "  ^ul^  la  i^o/iu,  (}ixi;s 
E  ti, Kin  uvinr  on,; luo: ,"  "  dlc  quo  modo  justiticB  clava  percussit 
eum,"  "  quo  modo"  are  Ablatives,  then  why  not  tw  ijio ,«  ?  And 
translating  it  into  English,  should  we  use  the  *Dative  or  Ablative 
preposition  ?      It  is  not  perhaps  easy  to  define  very  critically 

*See  Buttman's  Datives,  p.  230,  every  one  of  which  I  sliould  consider  as  nnder 
-the  accident  or  relation  called  Ablative,  having  no  signification  of  approach  ac- 
cording to  his  definition  of  the  Dative. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  273 

what  constitutes  a  case  in  the  declension  of  nonns.  All  agree 
IS  to  the  Nominative  that  it  is  simply  the  name  of  the  thing.  If 
we  admit  that  a  distinct  case  is  constituted  by  any  accident  or 
modification  which  changes  the  relation  which  that  bears  to  the 
actors  or  action  of  the  sentence,  we  must  agree  to  the  six  cases 
at  least ;  because,  for  example,  to  a  thing,  and  from  a  thing  are 
very  different  accidents  to  the  thing.  It  may  be  said  that  if 
every  distinct  accident  or  change  of  relation  constitutes  a  differ- 
ent case,  then  there  are  in  every  language  as  many  cases  as  there 
are  prepositions;  for  this  is  the  peculiar  office  of  the  preposition. 
But  because  we  do  not  designate  by  special  names  all  the  cases 
to  which  a  noun  is  liable,'  is  that  a  reason  why  we  should  throw 
away  half  of  those  we  have,  as  is  done  by  those  grammarians 
who  reject  all  cases,  but  the  Nominative,  Genitive,  and  Accu- 
sative, and  in  a  less  degree  by  those  also  who  reject  the  Ablative 
alone  ?  as  pushing  the  discrimination  of  all  the  possible  cases  te 
extremities  leads  us  to  nothing  useful  or  practicable,  I  am  con 
tented  with  the  old  six  cases,  familiar  to  every  cultivated  Ian 
guage,  ancient  and  modern,  and  well  understood  by  all.  I  ac- 
Knowledge  myself  at  the  same  time  not  an  adept  in  the  meta- 
physical speculations  of  Grammar.  By  analyzing  too  minutely 
we  often  reduce  our  subject  to  atoms,  of  which  the  mind  loses 
its  hold.  Nor  am  I  a  friend  to  a  scrupulous  purism  of  style.  I 
readily  sacrifice  the  niceties  of  syntax  to  euphony  and  strength. 
It  is  by  boldly  neglecting  the  rigorisms  of  grammar,  that  Tacitus 
has  made  himself  the  strongest  writer  in  the  world.  The  Hy- 
peresitics  call  him  barbarous  ;  but  I  should  be  sorry  to  exchange 
his  barbarisms  for  their  wise-drawn  purisms.  Some  of  his  sen- 
tences are  as  strong  as  language  can  make  them.  Had  he  scru- 
pulously filled  up  the  whole  of  their  syntax,  they  would  have 
been  merely  common.  To  explain  my  meaning  by  an  English 
example,  I  will  quote  the  motto  of  one,  I  believe,  of  the  regi- 
cides of  Charles  I.,  "  Rebellion  to  tyrants  is  obedience  t )  God." 
Oorrect  its  syntax,  "  Rebellion  against  tyrants  is  obedience  to 
God,"  it  has  lost  all  the  strength  and  beauty  of  the  antithesis. 
However,  dear  Sir,  I  profess  again  my  want  of  familiarity  with 

VOL.  VII.  IS 


274  JEFFERSON'S    AVORKS. 

these  speculations  ;  I  hazard  them  without  confidence,  and  offe' 
them  submissively  to  your  consideration  and  more  practised 
judgment. 

Although  writing,  with  both  hands  crippled,  is  slow  and  pain- 
ful, and  therefore  nearly  laid  aside  from  necessity,  I  have  been 
decoyed  by  my  subjects  into  a  very  long  letter.  What  would 
therefore  have  been  a  good  excuse  fdr  ending  with  the  first  page 
cannot  be  a  bad  one  for  concluding  in  the  fourth,  with  the  as- 
surance of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTiOELLO,  Febviiary  25,  1823. 

Dear  Sir, — I  received,  in  due  time,  your  two  favors  of  De- 
cember the  2d  and  February  the  10th,  and  have  to  acknowledge 
for  the  ladies  of  my  native  State  their  obligations  to  you  for  the 
enconiums  which  you  are  so  kind  as  to  bestow  on  them.  They 
certainly  claim  no  advantages  over  those  of  their  sister  States, 
and  are  sensible  of  more  favorable  circumstances  existing  with 
many  of  them,  and  happily  availed,  which  our  situation  does  not 
offer.  But  the  paper  respecting  Monticello,  to  which  you  allude, 
was  not  written  by  a  Virginian,  but  a  visitant  from  another 
State  ;  and  written  by  memory  at  least  a  dozen  years  after  the 
visit.  This  has  occasioned  some  lapses  of  recollection,  and  a 
confusion  of  some  things  in  the  mind  of  our  friend,  and  particu- 
larly as  to  the  volume  of  slanders  supposed  to  have  been  cut  out 
of  newspapers  and  preserved.  It  would  not,  indeed,  have  been 
a  single  volume,  but  an  encyclopedia  in  bulk.  But  I  never  had 
such  a  volume  ;  indeed,  I  rarely  thought  those  libels  worth  read- 
ing, much  less  preserving  and  remembering.  At  the  end  of 
every  year,  I  generally  sorted  all  my  pamphlets,  and  had  them 
bound  according  to  their  subjects.  One  of  these  volumes  con- 
sisted of  personal  altercations  between  individuals,  and  calum- 
nies on  each  other.  This  was  lettered  on  the  back,  "  Personal- 
ities," and  is  now  in  the  library  of  Congress.     I  was  in  the  habit, 


CORRESPONDENCE.  275 

also,  while  living  apart  from  my  family,  of  cutting  out  of  the 
newspapers  such  morsels  of  poetry,  or  tales,  as  I  thought  would 
^jlease,  and  of  sending  them  to  my  grandchildren,  who  pasted 
them  on  leaves  of  blank  paper  and  formed  them  into  a  book. 
These  two  volumes  have  been  confounded  into  one  in  the  recol- 
lection of  our  friend.  Her  poetical  imagination,  too,  has  height- 
ened the  scenes  she  visited,  as  well  as  the  merits  of  the  inhabit- 
ants, to  whom  her  society  was  a  delightful  gratification. 

I  have  just  finished  reading  O'Meara's  Bonaparte.  It  places 
him  in  a  higher  scale  of  understanding  than  I  had  allotted  him. 
I  had  thought  him  the  greatest  of  all  military  captains,  but  an 
indifferent  statesman,  and  misled  by  unworthy  passions.  The 
flashes,  however,  which  escaped  from  him  in  these  conversa- 
tions with  O'Meara,  prove  a  mind  of  great  expansion,  although 
not  of  distinct  development  and  reasoning.  He  seizes  results 
with  rapidity  and  penetration,  but  never  explains  logically  the 
process  of  reasoning  by  which  he  arrives  at  them.  This  book, 
too,  makes  us  forget  his  atrocities  for  a  moment,  in  commisera- 
tion of  his  sufferings.  I  will  not  say  that  the  authorities  of  the 
world,  charged  with  the  care  of  their  country  and  people,  had 
not  a  right  to  confine  him  for  life,  as  a  lion  or  tiger,  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  self-preservation.  There  was  no  safety  to  nations  while 
he  was  permitted  to  roam  at  large.  But  the  putting  him  to  death 
in  cold  blood,  by  lingering  tortures  of  mind,  by  vexations,  insults 
and  deprivations,  was  a  degree  of  inhumanity  to  which  the  pois- 
onings and  assassinations  of  the  school  of  Borgia  and  the  den  of 
Marat  never  attained.  The  book  proves,  also,  that  nature  had 
denied  him  the  moral  sense,  the  first  excellence  of  well-organized 
man.  If  he  could  seriously  and  repeatedly  affirm  that  he  had 
raised  himself  to  power  without  ever  having  committed  a  crime, 
it  proves  that  he  wanted  totally  the  sense  of  right  and  wrong. 
If  he  could  consider  the  millions  of  human  lives  which  he  had 
destroyed  or  caused  to  be  destroyed,  the  desolations  of  countries 
by  plunderings,  burnings,  and  famine,  the  destitutions  of  lawful 
rulers  of  the  world  without  the  consent  of  their  constituents,  to 
place  his  brothers  and  sisters  on  their  thrones,  the  cutting  up  of 


276  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

established  societies  of  men  and  jumbling  them  discordantly  to- 
gether again  at  his  caprice,  the  demolition  of  the  fairest  hopes  of 
mankind  for  the  recovery  of  their  rights  and  amelioration  of  their 
condition,  and  all  the  numberless  train  of  his  other  enormities ; 
the  man,  I  say,  who  could  consider  all  these  as  no  crimes,  must 
have  been  a  moral  monster,  against  whom  every  hand  should 
have  been  lifted  to  slay  him. 

You  are  so  kind  as  to  inquire  after  my  health.  The  bone  of 
my  arm  is  well  knitted,  but  my  hand  and  fingers  are  in  a  dis- 
couraging condition,  kept  entirely  useless  by  an  cedematous  swell- 
ing of  slow  amendment. 

God  bless  you  and  continue  your  good  health  of  body  and  mind 


TO    JUDGE    JOHNSON. 

MoNTicEi.Lo,  March  4,  1823. 

Deak  Sir, — I  delayed  some  time  the  acknowledgment  of  your 
welcome  letter  of  December  10th,  on  the  common  lazy  principle 
of  never  doing  to-day  what  we  can  put  oflf  to  to-morrow,  until 
it  became  doubtful  whether  a  letter  would  find  you  at  Charies- 
ton.  Learning  now  that  you  are  at  Washington,  I  will  reply  to 
some  particulars  which  seem  to  require  it. 

The  North  American  Review  is  a  work  1  do  not  take,  and 
which  is  little  known  in  this  State,  consequently  I  have  never 
seen  its  observations  on  your  inestimable  history,  but  a  reviewer 
can  never  let  a  work  pass  uncensured.  He  must  always  make 
himself  wiser  than  his  author.  He  would  otherwise  think  it  an 
abdication  of  his  office  of  censor.  On  this  occasion,  he  seems  to 
have  had  more  sensibility  for  Virginia  than  she  has  for  herself; 
for,  on  reading  the  work,  I  saw  nothing  to  touch  our  pride  or  jeal- 
ousy, but  every  expression  of  respect  and  good  will  which  truth 
could  justify.  The  family  of  enemies,  whose  buzz  you  appre- 
hend, are  now  nothing.  You  may  learn  this  at  Washington ; 
and  their  military  relation  has  long  ago  had  the  full-voiced  con- 
demnation of  his  own  State.     Do  not  fear,  therefore,  these  in- 


COREESPONDEN'OE.  277 

sects.  Wliat  you  write  will  be  far  above  their  grovelling  sphere. 
Let  me,  then,  implore  you,  dear  Sir,  to  finish  your  history  of  par- 
ties, leaving  the  time  of  publication  to  the  state  of  things  you 
may  deem  proper,  but  taking  especial  cure  that  we  do  not  lose  it 
altogether.  We  have  been  too  careless  of  our  future  reputation, 
while  our  tories  will  omit  nothing  to  place  us  in  the  wrong.  Be- 
sides the  five-volumed  libel  which  represents  us  as  struggling  for 
of&ce,  and  not  at  all  to  prevent  our  government  from  being  ad- 
ministered into  a  monarchy,  the  life  of  Hamilton  is  in  the  hands 
of  a  man  who,  to  the  bitterness  of  the  priest,  adds  the  rancor  of 
the  fiercest  federalism.  Mr.  Adams'  papers,  too,  and  his  biogra- 
phy, will  descend  of  course  to  his  son,  whose  pen,  you  know,  is 
pointed,  and  his  prejudices  not  in  our  favor.  And  doubtless  other 
things  are  in  preparation,  unknown  to  us.  On  our  part  we  are 
depending  on  truth  to  make  itself  known,  while  history  is  taking 
a  contrary  set  which  may  become  too  inveterate  for  correction. 
Mr.  Madison  will  probably  leave  something,  but  I  believe,  only 
particular  passages  of  our  history,  and  these  chiefly  confined  to 
the  period  between  the  dissolution  of  the  old  and  commencement 
of  the  new  government,  which  is  peculiarly  within  his  knowl- 
edge. After  he  joined  me  in  the  administration,  he  had  no  leis- 
ure to  write.  This,  too,  was  my  case.  But  although  I  had  not 
time  to  prepare  anything  express,  my  letters,  (all  preserved)  will 
furnish  the  daily  occurrences  and  views  from  my  return  from 
Europe  in  1790,  till  I  retired  finally  from  office.  These  will 
command  more  conviction  than  anything  I  could  have  written 
after  my  retirement ;  no  day  having  ever  passed  during  that  pe- 
riod without  a  letter  to  somebody,  written  too  in  the  moment, 
and  in  the  warmth  and  freshness  of  fact  and  feeling,  they  will 
carry  internal  evidence  that  what  they  breathe  is  genuine.  Se- 
lections from  these,  after  my  death,  may  come  out  successively 
as  the  maturity  of  circumstances  may  render  their  appearance 
seasonable.  But  multiplied  testimony,  multiplied  views  will  be 
necessary  to  give  solid  establishment  to  truth.  Much  is  known 
to  one  which  is  not  known  to  another,  and  no  one  knows  every- 
thing.    It  is  the  sum  of  individual  knowledge  which  is  to  make 


278  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

lip  the  whole  truth,  and  to  give  its  correct  current  through  future 
time.  Then  do  not,  dear  Sir,  withhold  your  stock  of  informa- 
tion ;  and  I  would  moreover  recommend  that  you  trust  it  not  to 
a  single  copy,  nor  to  a  single  depository.  Leave  it  not  in  the 
power  of  any  one  person,  under  the  distempered  view  of  an  un- 
lucky moment,  to  deprive  us  of  the  weight  of  your  testimony, 
and  to  purchase,  by  its  destruction,  the  favor  of  any  party  or  per- 
sorij  as  happened  with  a  paper  of  Dr.  Franklin's. 

I  cannot  lay  down  my  pen  without  recurring  to  one  of  the 
subjects  of  my  former  letter,  for  in  truth  there  is  no  danger  I  ap- 
prehend so  much  as  the  consolidation  of  our  government  by  the 
noiseless,  and  therefore  unalarming,  instrumentality  of  the  su- 
preme court.  This  is  the  form  in  which  federalism  now  arrays 
itself,  and  consolidation  is  the  present  principle  of  distinction 
between  republicans  and  the  pseudo-republicans  but  real  federal- 
ists. I  must  comfort  myself  with  the  hope  that  the  judges  will 
see  the  importance  and  the  duty  of  giving  their  country  the  only 
evidence  they  can  give  of  fidelity  to  its  constitution  and  integrity 
in  the  administration  of  its  laws ;  that  is  to  say,  by  every  one's 
giving  his  opinion  seriatim  and  publicly  on  the  cases  he  decides. 
Let  him  prove  by  his  reasoning  that  he  has  read  the  papers,  that 
he  has  considered  the  case,  that  in  the  application  of  the  law  to 
■  it,  he  uses  his  own  judgment  independently  and  unbiased  by 
party  views  and  personal  favor  or  disfavor.  Throw  himself  in 
every  case  on  God  and  his  country  ;  both  will  excuse  him  for 
error  and  value  him  for  his  honesty.  The  very  idea  of  cooking 
up  opinions  in  conclave,  begets  suspicions  that  something  passes 
which  fears  the  public  ear,  and  this,  spreading  by  degrees,  must 
produce  at  some  time  abridgment  of  tenure,  facility  of  removal, 
or  some  other  modification  which  may  promise  a  remedy.  For 
m  truth  there  is  at  this  time  more  hostility  to  the  federal  judi- 
ciary, than  to  any  other  organ  of  the  government. 

I  should  greatly  prefer,  as  you  do,  four  judges  to  any  greater 
number.  Great  lawyers  are  not  over  abundant,  and  the  multipli- 
cation of  judges  only  enable  the  weak  to  out-vote  the  wise,  and 


COKKESPONDENOE.  279 

three  concurrent  opinions  out  of  four  gives  a  strong  presumption 
of  right. 

I  cannot  better  prove  my  entire  coniidence  in  your  candor, 
than  by  the  frankness  with  which  I  commit  myself  to  you,  and 
to  this  I  add  with  truth,  assurances  of  the  sincerity  of  my  great 
esteem  and  respect. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFERSON. 

QuiNcy,  March  10,  1823. 

Dear  Sir, — The  sight  of  your  well  known  hand  writing  in 
your  favor  of  25th  February  last,  gave  me  great  pleasure,  as  it 
proved  your  arm  to  be  restored,  and  your  pen  still  manageable. 
May  it  continue  till  you  shall  become  as  perfect  a  Galvinist  as  I 
am  in  one  particular.  Pqor  Calvin's  infirmities,  his  rheumatism, 
liis  gouts  and  sciatics,  made  him  frequently  cry  out,  Mon  dieu, 
jusqu'd  quand.  Lord,  how  long!  Prat,  once  chief  justice 
of  New  York,  always  tormented  with  infirmities,  dreamt  that  he 
was  situated  on  a  single  rock  in  the  midst  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
He  heard  a  voice  : 

"Why  mourns  the  bard,  Apollo  bids  thee  rise, 
Renounce  the  dust,  and  claim  thy  native  skies.'' 

The  ladies'  visit  to  Monticello  has  put  my  readers  in  requisi- 
tion to  read  to  me  Simons'  travels  in  Switzerland.  I, thought  I 
had  some  knowledge  of  that  country  before,  but  I  find  I  had  no 
idea  of  it.  How  degenerated  are  the  Swiss.  They  might  de- 
fend their  country  against  France,  Austria,  and  Russia ;  neither 
of  whom  ought  to  be  sufiered  to  march  armies  over  their  moun- 
tains. Those  powers  have  practiced  as  much  tyranny,  and  im- 
morality, as  even  the  emperor  Napoleon  did  over  them,  or  over 
the  royalists  of  Germany  or  Italy. 

Neither  France,  Austria,  or  Spain,  ought  to  have  a  foot  of  land 
in  Italy.  All  conquerors  are  alike.  Every  one  of  them.  Jui-a 
negat  sihi  lati,  nihil  non  arrogat  armis.     We  have  nothing  but 


280  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

fables  concerning  Theseus,  Bacchus,  and  Hercules,  and  even 
Sesostris  ;  but  I  dare  say  that  every  one  of  them  was  as  tyranni- 
cal and  immoral  as  Napoleon.  Nebuchadnezzar  is  the  first  great 
conqueror  of  whom  we  have  anything  like  history,  and  he  was 
as  great  as  any  of  them.  Alexander  and  Ca3sar  were  more  im- 
moral than  Napoleon.  Zingis  Khan  was  as  great  a  conqueror  as 
any  of  them,  and  destroyed  as  many  millions  of  lives,  and  thought 
he  had  a  right  to  the  whole  globe,  if  he  could  subdue  it. 

What  are  we  to  think  of  the  crusades  in  which  three  millions 
of  lives  at  least  were  probably  sacrificed.  And  what  right  had 
St.  Louis  and  Richard  Cosur  de  Lion  to  Palestine  and  Syria 
more  than  Alexander  to  India,  or  Napoleon  to  Egypt  and  Italy  ? 
Right  and  justice  have  hard  fare  in  this  Avorld,  but  there  is  a 
power  above  who  is  capable  and  willing  to  put  all  things  right 
in  the  end  ;  et  pour  mettre  chacun  a  sa  place  dans  Vuniverse,  and 
I  doubt  not  he  will. 

Mr.  English,  a  Bostonian,  has  published  a  volume  of  his  expe- 
dition with  Ishmael  Pashaw,  up  the  river  Nile.  He  advanced 
above  the  third  cataract,  and  opens  a  prospect  of  a  resurrection 
from  the  dead  of  those  vast  and  ancient  countries  of  Abyssinia 
and  Ethiopia ;  a  free  communication  with  India,  and  the  river 
Niger,  and  the  city  of  Tombuctoo.  This,  however,  is  conjec- 
ture and  speculation  rather  than  certainty  ;  but  a  free  communica- 
tion by  land  between  Europe  and  India  will  ere  long  be  opened. 
A  few  American  steamboats,  and  our  Quincy  stone-cutters  would 
soon  make  the  Nile  as  navigable  as  our  Hudson,  Potomac,  or 
Mississippi.  You  see  as  my  reason  and  intellect  fails,  my  imag- 
ination grows  more  wild  and  ungovernable,  but  my  friendship 
remains  the  same.     Adieu. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTicuLLO,  April  U,  1823. 

De.\h  Silt, — The  wishes  expressed  in  your  last  favor,  that  I 
may  continue  in  life  and  health  until  I  become  a  Calvinist,  at 
least  in  his  exclamation  of,  •'  Mon  Dieu  !  jusqu'u  quand !"  would 


CORRESPONOENOE.  281 

make  me  immortal.  I  can  never  join  Calvin  in  addressing  his 
God.  He  was  indeed  an  atheist,  which  I  can  never  be  ;  or  rather 
his  religion  was  daemonism.  If  ever  man  worshipped  a  false 
God,  he  did.  The  being  described  in  his  five  points,  is  not  the 
God  whom  you  and  I  acknowledge  and  adore,  the  creator  and 
benevolent  governor  of  the  world ;  but  a  dasmon  of  malignant 
spirit.  It  would  be  more  pardonable  to  believe  in  no  God  at  all, 
than  to  blaspheme  him  by  the  atrocious  attributes  of  Calvin.  In- 
deed, I  think  that  every  Christian  sect  gives  a  great  handle  to 
atheism  by  their  general  dogma,  that,  without  a  revelation,  there 
would  not  be  sufficient  proof  of  the  being  of  a  God.  Now  one- 
sixth  of  mankind  only  are  supposed  to  be  Christians ;  the  other 
five-sixths  then,  who  do  not  believe  in  the  Jewish  and  Christian 
revelation,  are  without  a  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  a  God ! 
This  gives  completely  a  gain  de  cause  to  the  disciples  of  Ocel- 
lus, Timseus,  Spinosa,  Diderot  and  D'Holbach.  The  argument 
which  they  rest  on  as  triumphant  and  unanswerable  is,  that  in 
every  hypothesis  of  cosmogony,  you  must  admit  an  eternal  pre- 
existence  of  something  ;  and  according  to  the  rule  of  sound  phil- 
osophy, you  are  never  to  employ  two  principles  to  solve  a  diffi- 
culty when  one  will  suffice.  They  say  then,  that  it  is  more 
simple  to  believe  at  once  in  the  eternal  pre-existence  of  the  world, 
as  it  is  now  going  on,  and  may  forever  go  on  by  the  principle  of 
reproduction  which  we  see  and  witness,  than  to  believe  in  the 
eternal  pre-existence  of  an  ulterior  cause,  or  creator  of  the  world, 
a  being  whom  we  see  not  and  know  not,  of  whose  form,  sub- 
stance and  mode,  or  place  of  existence,  or  of  action,  no  sense  in- 
forms us,  no  power  of  the  mind  enables  us  to  delineate  or  com- 
prehend. Oil  the  contrary,  I  hold,  (without  appeal  to  revelation) 
that  when  we  take  a  view  of  the  universe,  in  its  parts,  general  or 
particular,  it  is  impossible  for  the  human  mind  not  to  perceive 
and  feel  a  conviction  of  design,  consummate  skill,  and  indefinite 
power  in  every  atom  of  its  composition.  The  movements  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  so  exactly  held  in  their  com'se  by  the  balance 
of  centrifugal  and  centripetal  forces ;  the  structure  of  our  earth  it- 
self, with  its  distribution  of  lands,  waters  and  atmosphere  ;  ani- 


282  JEFFEKSON'S    WORKS. 

inal  and  vegetable  bodies,  examined  in  ail  their  minutest  parti- 
cles ;  insects,  mere  atoms  of  life,  yet  as  perfectly  organized  aa 
man  or  mammoth  ;  the  mineral  substances,  their  generation  and 
uses ;  it  is  impossible,  I  say,  for  the  human  mind  not  to  believe, 
that  there  is  in  all  this,  design,  cause  and  effect,  up  to  an  ultimate 
cause,  a  fabricator  of  all  things  from  matter  and  motion,  their 
preserver  and  regulator  while  permitted  to  exist  in  their  presejit 
forms,  and  their  regeneratiou  into  new  and  other  forms.  We  see, 
too,  evident  proofs  of  the  necessity  of  a  superintending  power,  to 
main-tain  the  universe  in  its  course  and  order.  Stars,  well  known, 
have  disappeared,  new  ones  have  come  into  view ;  comets,  in 
their  incalculable  courses,  may  run  foul  of  suns  and  planets,  and 
require  renovation  under  other  laws  ;  certain  races  of  animals  are 
become  extinct ;  and  were  there  no  restoring  power,  all  existences 
might  extinguish  successively,  one  by  one,  until  all  should  be  re- 
duced to  a  shapeless  chaos.  So  irresistible  are  these  evidences 
of  an  intelligent  and  powerful  agent,  that,  of  the  infinite  numbers 
of  men  who  have  existed  through  all  time,  they  have  believed, 
in  the  proportion  of  a  million  at  least  to  unit,  in  the  hypothesis 
of  an  eternal  pre-existence  of  a  creator,  rather  than  in  that  of  a 
self-existent  universe.  Surely  this  unanimous  sentiment  renders 
this  more  probable,  than  that  of  the  few  in  the  other  hypothesis. 
Some  early  Christians,  indeed,  have  believed  in  the  co-eternal  pre- 
existence  of  both  the  creator  and  the  world,  without  changing 
their  relation  of  cause  and  effect.  That  this  was  the  opinion  of 
St.  Thomas,  we  are  informed  by  Cardinal  Toleta,  in  these  words. 
"  Deus  ah  cBterno  fuit  jaTn  omnipoteiis,  sicut  cum  prodiixit  mun- 
dum.  Ah  aterno  potuit  producere  mundwin.  Si  sol  ah  cBterno 
esset,  lumen  ah  aterno  essel ;  et  si  pes,  similiter  vesiigiuiii.  At 
lumen  et  vestigium  ejfectiis  sunt  efficientis  solis  et  pedis ;  potuit 
ergo  cuiiij  causa  ceterna  effectus  co-ceierna  esse.  Cujus  sefitentia 
est  S.  Thomas  theologorum,  priinus." — Cardinal  Toleta. 

Of  the  nature  of  this  being  we  know  nothing.  Jesus  tells  us, 
that  "  God  is  a  spirit."  4.  John  24.  But  without  defming  what 
a  spirit  is:  '  Jipt uftu 'o  ti toe."  Down  to  the  third  century,  we 
know  it  was  still  deemed  material ;  but  of  a  lighter,  subtler  mat- 


OOREESPONDElSrOE.  283 

ter  than  our  gross  bodies.  So  says  Origeri,  "  Deus  igittir,  cui 
anima  similis  est,  juxta  originem,  reapte  corporaks  est;  sed 
graviorum  tantuin  ratione  corporum  incorporeus."  These  are 
the  words  of  Huet  in  his  commentary  on  Origen.  Origen  him- 
self says,  "  appellatio  u^uiumnu  apud  nostras  scriptores  est  inusl- 
tata  et  incognita."  So  also  TertuUian  ;  "  quis  autetn  negahit 
deum  esse  corpus  etsi  deus  spiritus  ?  Spiritus  etiam  corporis 
sui  generis,  in  sua  effigie." — Tertullian.  These  two  fathers  were 
of  the  third  century.  Calvin's  character  of  this  Supreme  Being 
seems  chiefly  copied  from  that  of  the  Jews.  But  the  reformation 
of  these  blasphemous  attributes,  and  substitution  of  those  more 
worthy,  pure,  and  sublime,  seems  to  have  been  the  chief  object 
of  Jesus  in  his  discourses  to  the  Jews ;  and  his  doctine  of  the  cos- 
mogony of  the  world  is  very  clearly  laid  down  in  the  three  first 
verses  of  the  first  chapter  of  John,  in  these  words  :  '■  'Ei-  uo/i;  tji'  i 

loyog,  Hul  u  )^6yoi  ^i'  TT^i)^  TOP  htiiv ,  uui  (:)toz^t  oXuvik,  Ovio^  ^r  it' ufj/rf  npog 
Till'  (-Jfni ,     Hum  i<  01  itvTin'  i-f  ii'  tTO-  xul  Xi-jolg  ut' (0  '  fv^c-  in  i)ui)e  5i',  v  vt'j  niei'.^^ 

Which  truly  translated  means,  "  In  the  beginning  God  existed,  and 
reason  [or  mind]  was  with  God,  and  that  mind  was  God.  This  was 
in  the  beginning  with  God.  All  things  were  created  by  it,  and 
without  it  was  made  not  one  thing  which  was  made."  Yet  this 
text,  so  plainly  declaring  the  doctrine  of  Jesus,  that  the  world 
was  created  by  the  supreme,  intelligent  being,  has  been  pervert- 
ed by  modern  Christians  to  build  up  a  second  person  of  their 
tritheism,  by  a  mistranslation  of  the  word  in;  r...  One  of  its  legit- 
imate meanings,  indeed,  is  "  a  word."  But  in  that  sense  it  makes 
an  unmeaning  jargon  ;  while  the  other  meaning,  "  reason,"  equal- 
ly legitimate,  explains  rationally  the  eternal  pre-existence  of  God, 
and  his  creation  of  the  world.  Knowing  how  incomprehensible 
it  was  that  "a  word,"  the  mere  action  or  articulation  of  the  or- 
gans of  speech  could  create  a  world,  th«y  undertook  to  make  of 
this  articulation  a  second  pre-existing  being,  and  ascribe  to  him, 
and  not  to  God,  the  creation  of  the  universe.  The  atheist  here 
plumes  himself  on  the  uselessness  of  such  a  God,  aqd  the  simpler 
hypothesis  of  a  self-existent  universe.  The  truth  is,  that  the 
greatest  enemies  to  the  doctrines  of  Jesus  are  those,  calling  them- 


284  JEFFERSON'S    "R^ORKS. 

selves  the  expositors  of  them,  who  have  perverted  them  for  the 
structure  of  a  system  of  fancy  absolutely  incomprehensible,  and 
without  any  foundation  in  his  genuine  words.  And  the  day  will 
come,  when  the  mystical  generation  of  Jesus,  by  the  Supreme 
Being  as  his  father,  in  the  womb  of  a  virgin,  will  be  classed  with 
the  fable  of  the  generation  of  Minerva  in  the  brain  of  Jupiter. 
But  we  may  hope  that  the  dawn  of  reason,  and  freedom  of 
thought  in  these  United  States,  will  do  away  all  this  artificial 
scaffolding,  and  restore  to  us  the  primitive  and  genuine  doctrines 
of  this  the  most  venerated  reformer  of  human  errors. 

So  much  for  your  quotation  of  Calvin's  "  mon  Dieu  !  jusqu'd, 
quand  !"  in  which,  when  addressed  to  the  God  of  Jesus,  and  our 
God,  I  join  you  cordially,  and  await  his  time  and  will  with  more 
readiness  than  reluctance.  May  we  meet  there  again,  in  Con- 
gress, with  our  ancient  colleagues,  and  receive  with  them  the 
seal  of  approbation,  "  well  done,  good  and  faithful  servants." 


TO  GENERAL  SAMUEL  SMITH. 

MoNTiOELLo,  May  3,  1823. 

Dear  General, — I  duly  received  your  favor  of  the  24th  ult. 
But  I  am  rendered  a  slow  correspondent  by  the  loss  of  the  use, 
totally  of  the  one,  and  almost  totally  of  the  other  wrist,  which 
renders  writing  scarcely  and  painfully  practicable.  I  learn  with 
great  satisfaction  that  wholsome  economies  have  been  found, 
sufficient  to  relieve  us  from  the  ruinous  necessity  of  adding  an- 
nually to  our  debt  by  new  loans.  The  deviser  of  so  salutary  a 
relief  deserves  truly  well  of  his  country.  I  shall  be  glad,  too,  if 
an  additional  tax  of  one-fourth  of  a  dollar  a  gallon  on  whiskey 
shall  enable  us  to  meet  all  our  engagements  with  punctuality. 
Viewing  that  tax  as  an  article  in  a  system  of  excise,  I  was 
once  glad  to  see  it  fall  with  the  rest  of  the  system,  which  I  con- 
sidered as  prematurely  and  unnecessarily  introduced.  It  was  evi- 
dent that  our  existing  taxes  were  then  equal  to  our  existing  debts. 
It  was  clearly  foreseen  also  that  the  surplus  from  excise  would 


CORRESPOT^DENOE.  285 

only  become  aliment  for  useless  offices,  and  would  be  swallowed 
in  idleness  by  those  whom  it  would  withdraw  from  useful  indus- 
try. Considering  it  only  as  a  fiscal  measare,  this  was  right.  But 
the  prostration  of  body  and  mind  which  the  cheapness  of  this 
liquor  is  spreading  through  the  mass  of  our  citizens,  now  calls 
the  attention  of  the  legislator  on  a  very  different  principle.  One 
of  his  important  duties  is  as  guardian  of  those  who  from  causes 
susceptible  of  precise  definition,  cannot  take  care  of  themselves. 
Such  are  infants,  maniacs,  gamblers,  drunkards.  The  last,  as 
much  as  the  maniac,  requires  restrictive  measures  to  save  him 
from  the  fatal  infatuation  under  which  he  is  destroying  his  health, 
his  morals,  his  family,  and  his  usefulness  to  society.  One  pow- 
erful obstacle  to  his  ruinous  self-indulgence  would  be  a  price  be- 
yond his  competence.  As  a  sanatory  measure,  therefore,  it  be- 
comes one  of  duty  in  the  public  guardians.  Yet  I  do  not  think 
it  follows  necessarily  that  imported  spirits  should  be  subjected  to 
similar  enhancement,  until  they  become  as  cheap  as  those  made 
at  home.  A  tax  on  whiskey  is  to  discourage  its  consumption  ;  a 
tax  on  foreign  spirits  encourages  whiskey  by  removing  its  rival 
from  competition.  The  price  and  present  duty  throw  foreign 
spirits  already  out  of  competition  with  whiskey,  and  accordingly 
they  are  used  but  tc  a  salutary  extent.  You  see  no  persons  be- 
sotting themselves  with  imported  spirits,  wines,  liquors,  cordials, 
&c.  Whiskey  claims  to  itself  alone  the  exclusive  office  of  sot- 
making.  Foreign  spirits,  wines,  teas,  coffee,  segars,  salt,  are  ar- 
ticles of  as  innocent  consumption  as  broadcloths  and  silks  and 
onght,  like  them,  to  pay  but  the  average  ad  valoi'em  duty  of 
other  imported  comforts.  All  of  them  are  ingredients  in  our  hap- 
piness, and  the  government  which  steps  out  of  the  ranks  of  the 
ordinary  articles  of  consumption  to  select  and  lay  under  dispro- 
portionate burthens  a  particular  one,  because  it  is  a  comfort, 
pleasing  to  the  taste,  or  necessary  to  health,  and  will  therefore 
be  bought,  is,  in  that  particular,  a  tyranny.  Taxes  on  consump- 
tion like  those  on  capital  or  income,  to  be  just,  must  be  uniform. 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  may  not  be  for  the  general  interest 
to  foster  for  awhile  certain  infant  manufactures,  untU  they  are 


286  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

strong  enough  to  stand  against  foreign  rivals ;  but  wlien  evident 
that  they  will  never  be  so,  it  is  against  right,  to  make  the  other 
branches  of  industry  support  them.  When  it  was  found  that 
France  could  not  make  sugar  under  6  h.  a  lb.,  was  it  not  tyran- 
ny to  restrain  her  citizens  from  importing  at  1  h.  ?  or  would  it 
not  have  been  so  to  have  laid  a  duty  of  5  h.  on  the  imported  ? 
The  permitting  an  exchange  of  industries  with  other  nations  is  a 
direct  encouragement  of  your  own,  which  without  that,  would 
bring  you  nothing  for  your  comfort,  and  would  of  course  cease 
to  be  produced. 

On  the  question  of  the  next  Presidential  election,  I  am  a  mere 
looker  on.  I  never  permit  myself  to  express  an  opinion,  or  to  feel 
a  wish  on  the  subject.  I  indulge  a  single  hope  only,  that  the 
choice  may  fall  on  one  who  will  be  a  friend  of  peace,  of  econo- 
my, of  the  republican  principles  of  our  constitution,  and  of  the 
salutary  distribution  of  powers  made  by  that  between  the  gener- 
al and  the  local  governments,  to  this,  I  ever  add  sincere  prayers 
for  your  happiness  and  prosperity. 


TO    MR.    MEGEAK. 

MoNTiCELi.n,  May  29.  1823. 

I  thank  you.  Sir,  for  the  copy  of  the  letters  of  Paul  and  Ami- 
cus, which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me,  and  shall  learn 
from  them  with  satisfaction  the  peculiar  tenets  of  the  Friends, 
and  particularly  their  opinions  on  the  incomprehensibilities 
(otherwise  called  the  mysteries)  of  the  trinity.  I  think  with 
them  on  many  points,  and  especially  on  missionary  and  Bible 
societies.  While  we  have  so  many  around  us,  within  the  same 
social  pale,  who  need  instruction  and  assistance,  why  carry  to  a 
distance,  and  to  strangers  what  our  own  neighbors  need  ?  It  is 
a  duty  certainly  to  give  our  sparings  to  those  who  want ;  but  to 
see  also  that  they  are  faithfully  distributed,  and  duly  apportioned 
to  the  respective  wants  of  those  receivers.  And  why  give  through 
agents  whom  we  know  not,  to  persons  whom  we  know  not,  and 


CORRESPONDENCE.  287 

in  countries  from  which  we  get  no  account,  when  we  can  do  it 
at  short  hand,  to  objects  under  our  eye,  through  agents  we  know, 
and  to  supply  wants  we  see  ?  I  do  not  know  that  it  is  a  duty 
to  disturb  by  missionaries  the  rehgion  and  peace  of  other  coun- 
tries, who  may  thinlc  themselves  bound  to  extinguish  by  fire 
and  fagot  the  heresies  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  conver- 
sions, and  quote  our  own  example  for  it.  Were  the  Pope,  or  hi? 
holy  allies,  to  send  in  mission  to  us  some  thousands  of  Jesuit 
priests  to  convert  us  to  their  orthodoxy,  I  suspect  that  we  should 
deem  and  treat  it  as  a  national  aggression  on  our  peace  and  faith. 
I  salute  you  in  the  spirit  of  peace  and  good  will. 


TO    THE    PRESIDENT. 

iroNTicKLi.o,  June  11,  1823 

Dear  Sir, — Considering  that  I  had  not  been  to  Bedford  for  a 
twelvemonth  before,  I  thought  myself  singularly  unfortunate  in 
so  timing  my  journey,  as  to  have  been  absent  exactly  at  the  mo- 
ment of  your  late  visit  to  our  neighborhood.  The  loss,  indeed, 
was  all  my  own  ;  for  in  these  short  interviews,  with  you,  I  gen- 
erally get  my  political  compass  rectified,  learn  from  you  where- 
abouts we  are,  and  correct  my  course  again.  In  exchaiige  for 
this,  I  can  give  you  but  newspaper  ideas,  and  little  indeed  of 
these,  for  I  read  but  a  single  paper,  and  that  hastily.  I  find 
Horace  and  Tacitus  so  much  better  writers  than  the  champions 
of  the  gazettes,  that  I  lay  those  down  to  take  up  these  with 
great  reluctance.  And  on  the  question  you  propose,  whether 
we  can,  in  any  form,  take  a  bolder  attitude  than  formerly  in 
favor  of  liberty,  I  can  give  you  but  commonplace  ideas.  They 
will  be  but  the  widow's  mite,  and  offered  only  because  requested. 
The  matter  which  now  embroils  Europe,  the  presumption  of 
dictating  to  an  independent  nation  the  form  of  its  government, 
is  so  arrogant,  so  atrocious,  that  indignation,  as  well  as  moral 
sentiment,  enlists  all  our  partialities  and  prayers  in  favor  of  one, 
and  our  equal   execrations  against   the   other.     1  do  not  know, 


288  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

indeed,  whether  all  nations  do  not  owe  to  one  another  a  bold 
and  open  declaration  of  their  sympathies  with  the  one  party, 
and  their  detestation  of  the  conduct  of  the  other.  But  farther 
than  this  we  are  not  bound  to  go  ;  and  indeed,  for  the  sake  of 
the  world,  we  ought  not  to  increase  the  jealousies,  or  draw  on 
ourselves  the  power  of  this  formidable  confederacy.  I  have 
ever  deemed  it  fundamental  for  the  United  States,  never  to  take 
active  part  in  the  quarrels  of  Europe.  Their  political  interests 
are  entirely  distinct  from  ours.  Their  mutual  jealousies,  their 
balance  of  power,  their  complicated  alliances,  their  forms  and 
principles  of  government,  are  all  foreign  to  us.  They  are  na- 
tions of  eternal  war.  All  their  energies  are  expended  in  the  de- 
struction of  the  labor,  property  and  lives  of  their  people.  On  our 
part,  never  had  a  people  so  favorable  a  chance  of  trying  the  op- 
posite system,  of  peace  and  fraternity  with  mankind,  and  the 
direction  of  all  our  means  and  faculties  to  the  purposes  of  im- 
provement instead  of  destruction.  With  Europe  we  have  few 
occasions  of  collision,  and  these,  with  a  little  prudence  and  for- 
bearance, may  be  generally  accommodated.  Of  the  brethren 
of  our  own  hemisphere,  none  are  yet,  or  for  an  age  to  come  will 
be,  in  a  shape,  condition,  or  disposition  t"  war  against  us.  And 
the  foothold  which  the  nations  of  Europe  nad  in  either  America, 
is  slipping  from  under  them,  so  that  we  shall  soon  be  rid  of  their 
neighborhood.  Cuba  alone  seems  at  present  to  hold  up  a  speck 
of  war  to  us.  Its  possession  by  Great  Britain  would  indeed  be 
a  great  calamity  to  us.  Could  we  induce  her  to  join  us  in  guar- 
anteeing its  independence  against  all  the  world,  except  Spain,  it 
would  be  nearly  as  valuable  to  us  as  if  it  were  our  own.  But 
should  she  take  it,  I  would  not  immediately  go  to  war  for  it ; 
because  the  first  war  on  other  accounts  will  give  it  to  us ;  or  the 
island  will  give  itself  to  us,  when  able  to  do  so.  While  no  duty, 
therefore,  calls  on  us  to  take  part  in  the  present  war  of  Europe, 
and  a  golden  harvest  offers  itself  in  reward  for  doing  nothing, 
peace  and  neutrality  seem  to  be  our  duty  and  interest.  We  may 
gratify  ourselves,  indeed,  with  a  neutrality  as  partial  to  Spain  as 
would  be  justifiable  without  giving  cause  of  war  to  her  adver- 


COREESPO^TDENCE.  289 

sary  ;  we  might  and  ought  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  happy  occa- 
sion of  procuring  and  cementing  a  cordial  reconciliation  with 
her,  hy  giving  assurance  of  every  friendly  office  which  neu- 
trality admits,  and  especially,  against  all  apprehension  of  our 
intermeddling  in  the  quarrel  with  her  colonies.  And  I  expect 
daily  and  confidently  to  hear  of  a  spark  kindled  in  France, 
which  will  employ  her  at  home,  and  relieve  Spain  from  all  fur- 
ther apprehensions  of  danger. 

That  England  is  playing  false  with  Spain  cannot  be  doubted. 
Her  government  is  looking  one  way  and  rowing  another.  It  is 
curious  to  look  back  a  little  on  past  events.  During  the  ascen- 
dancy of  Bonaparte,  the  word  among  the  herd  of  kings,  was 
"  sauve  qui  pent."  Each  shifted  for  himself,  and  left  his  brethren 
to  squander  and  do  the  same  as  they  could.  After  the  battle  of 
Waterloo,  and  the  military  possession  of  France,  they  rallied  and 
combined  in  common  cause,  to  maintain  each  other  against  any 
similar  and  future  danger.  And  in  this  alliance,  Louis,  now 
avowedly,  and  George,  secretly  but  solidly,  were  of  the  con- 
tracting parties  ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  allies  are 
bound  by  treaty  to  aid  England  with  their  armies,  should  insur- 
rection take  place  among  her  people.  The  coquetry  she  is  now 
playing  off  between  her  people  and  her  allies  is  perfectly  under- 
stood by  the  latter,  and  accordingly  gives  no  apprehensions  to 
France,  to  whom  it  is  all  explained.  The  diplomatic  corres- 
pondence she  is  now  displaying,  these  double  papers  fabricated 
merely  for  exhibition,  in  which  she  makes  herself  talk  of  morals 
and  principle,  as  if  her  qualms  of  conscience  would  not  permit 
her  to  go  all  lengths  with  her  Holy  Allies,  are  all  to  gull  her  own 
people.  It  is  a  theatrical  farce,  in  which  the  five  powers  are  the 
actors,  England  the  Tartufle,  and  her  people  the  dupes.  Playing 
thus  so  dextrously  into  each  others'  hands,  and  their  own  persons 
seeming  secured,  they  are  now  looking  to  their  privileged  orders. 
These  faithful  auxiliaries,  or  accomplices,  must  be  saved.  This 
war  is  evidently  that  of  the  general  body  of  the  aristocracy,  in 
which  England  is  also  acting  her  part.  "  Save  but  the  Nobles 
and  there  shall  be  no  war,"  says  she,  masking  her  measures  at 

VOL.   VI[.  19 


290  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

the  same  time  under  the  form  of  friendship  and  mediation,  and 
hypocritically,  while  a  party,  oflfering  herself  as  a  judge,  to  betray 
those  whom  she  is  not  permitted  openly  to  oppose.  A  fraudulent 
neutrality,  if  neutrality  at  all,  is  all  Spain  will  get  from  her. 
And  Spain,  probably,  perceives  this,  and  willingly  winks  at  it 
rather  than  have  her  weight  thrown  openly  into  the  other  scale. 
But  I  am  going  beyond  my  text,  and  sinning  against  the  adage 
of  carrying  coals  to  Newcastle.  In  hazarding  to  you  my  crude 
and  uninformed  notions  of  things  beyond  my  cognizance,  only 
be  so  good  as  to  remember  that  it  is  at  your  request,  and  with  as 
little  confidence  on  my  part  as  profit  on  yours.  You  will  do 
what  is  right,  leaving  the  people  of  Europe  to  act  their  follies 
and  crimes  among  themselves,  while  we  pursue  in  good  faith 
the  paths  of  peace  and  prosperity.  To  your  judgment  we  are 
willingly  resigned,  with  sincere  assurances  of  affectionate  esteem 
and  respect. 


TO    JUDGE    JOHNSON. 

MoNTiCEi.t.o,  June  12,  1823. 

Dear  Sir, — Our  correspondence  is  of  that  accommodating 
character,  which  admits  of  suspension  at  the  convenience  of 
either  party,  without  inconvenience  to  the  other.  Hence  this 
tardy  acknowledgment  of  your  favor  of  April  the  11th.  I  learn 
from  that  with  great  pleasure,  that  you  have  resolved  on  con- 
tinuing your  history  of  parties.  Our  opponents  are  far  ahead  of 
us  in  preparations  for  placing  their  cause  favorably  before  pos- 
terity. Yet  I  hope  even  from  some  of  them  the  escape  of  pre- 
cious truths,  in  angry  explosions  or  effusions  of  vanity,  which  will 
betray  the  genuiae  monarchism  of  their  principles.  They  do 
not  themselves  believe  what  they  endeavor  to  inculcate,  that  we 
were  an  opposition  party,  not  on  principle,  but  merely  seeking 
for  ofHce.  The  fact  is,  that  at  the  formation  of  our  government, 
many  had  formed  their  political  opinions  on  European  writings 
and  practices,  believing  the  experience  of  old  countries,  and  es- 
pecially of  England,  abusive  as  it  was,  to  be  a  safer  guide  thai 


CORRESPONDENCE.  291 

mere  theory.  The  doctrines  of  Europe  were,  that  men  in  nu- 
merous associations  cannot  be  restrained  within  the  Hmits  of 
order  and  justice,  but  by  forces  physical  and  moral,  wielded  over 
them  by  authorities  independent  of  their  will.  Hence  their  or- 
ganization of  kings,  hereditary  nobles,  and  priests.  Still  furthei 
to  constrain  the  brute  force  of  the  people,  they  deem  it  necessary 
to  keep  them  down  by  hard  labor,  poverty  and  ignorance,  and 
to  take  from  them,  as  from  bees,  so  much  of  their  earnings,  as 
that  unremitting  labor  shall  be  necessary  to  obtain  a  sufficient 
surplus  barely  to  sustain  a  scanty  and  miserable  life.  And  these 
earnings  they  apply  to  maintain  their  privileged  orders  in  splen- 
dor and  idleness,  to  fascinate  the  eyes  of  the  people,  and  excite 
in  them  an  humble  adoration  and  submission,  as  to  an  order  of 
superior  beings.  Although  few  among  us  had  gone  all  these 
lengths  of  opinion,  yet  many  had  advanced,  some  more,  some 
less,  on  the  way.  And  in  the  convention  which  formed  our 
government,  they  endeavored  to  draw  the  cords  of  power  as  tight 
as  Ihey  could  obtain  them,  to  lessen  the  dependence  of  the  gen- 
eral functionaries  on  their  constituents,  to  subject  to  them  those 
of  the  States,  and  to  weaken  their  means  of  maintaining  the 
steady  equilibrium  which  the  majority  of  the  convention  had 
deemed  salutary  for  both  branches,  general  and  local.  To  re- 
cover, therefore,  in  practice  the  powers  which  the  nation  had 
refused,  and  to  warp  to  their  own  wishes  those  actually  given, 
was  the  steady  object  of  the  federal  party.  Ours,  on  the  con- 
trary, was  to  maintain  the  will  of  the  majority  of  the  conven- 
tion, and  of  the  people  themselves.  We  believed,  with  them, 
that  man  was  a  rational  animal,  endowed  by  nature  with  rights, 
and  with  an  innate  sense  of  justice  ;  and  that  he  could  be  re- 
strained from  wrong  and  protected  in  right,  by  moderate  powers, 
confided  to  persons  of  his  own  choice,  and  held  to  their  duties 
by  dependence  on  his  own  will.  We  believed  that  the  compli- 
cated organization  of  kings,  nobles,  and  priests,  was  not  the 
wisest  nor  best  to  effect  the  happiness  of  associated  man  ;  that 
wisdom  and  virtue  were  not  hereditary  ;  that  the  trappings  of 
such  a  machinery,  consumed  by  their  expense,  those  earnings  of 


■292  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

industry,  they  were  meant  to  protect,  and,  by  the  inequalities 
they  produced,  exposed  liberty  to  sufferance.  We  believed  that 
men,  enjoying  in  ease  and  security  the  full  fruits  of  their  own 
industry,  enlisted  by  all  their  interests  on  the  side  of  law  and 
order,  habituated  to  think  for  themselves,  and  to  follow  their 
reason  as  their  guide,  would  be  more  easily  and  safely  governed, 
than  with  minds  nourished  ia  error,  and  vitiated  and  debased, 
as  in  Europe,  by  ignorance,  indigence  and  oppression.  The 
cherishment  of  the  people  then  was  our  principle,  the  fear  and 
distrust  of  them,  that  of  the  other  party.  Composed,  as  we  wet's, 
of  the  landed  and  laboring  interests  of  the  country,  we  could  not 
be  less  anxious  for  a  government  of  law  and  order  than  were  the 
inhabitants  of  the  cities,  the  strongholds  of  federalism.  And 
whether  our  efforts  to  save  the  principles  and  form  of  our  consti- 
tution have  not  been  salutary,  let  the  present  republican  freedom, 
order  and  prosperity  of  our  country  determine.  History  may 
distort  truth,  and  will  distort  it  for  a  time,  by  the  superior  efforts, 
at  justification  of  those  who  are  conscious  of  needing  it  most. 
Nor  will  the  opening  scenes  of  our  present  government  be  seen 
in  their  true  aspect,  until  the  letters  of  the  day,  now  held  in  pri- 
vate hoards,  shall  be  broken  up  and  laid  open  to  public  view. 
What  a  treasure  will  be  found  in  General  Washington's  cabinet, 
when  it  shall  pass  into  the  hajids  of  as  candid  a  friend  to  truth  as 
he  was  himself !  When  no  longer,  like  Caesar's  notes  and  memo- 
randums in  the  hands  of  Anthony,  it  shall  be  open  to  the  high 
priests  of  federalism  only,  and  garbled  to  say  so  much,  and  no 
'more,  as  suits  their  views  ! 

With  respect  to  his  farewell  address,  to  the  authorship  of 
which,  it  seems,  there  are  conflicting  claims,  I  can  state  to  you 
some  facts.  He  had  determined  to  decline  a  re-election  at  the 
end  of  his  first  term,  and  so  far  determined,  that  he  had  requested 
Mr.  Madison  to  prepare  for  him  something  valedictory,  to  be  ad- 
dressed to  his  constituents  on  his  retirement.  This  was  done, 
but  he  was  finally  persuaded  to  acquiesce  in  a  second  election, 
to  which  no  one  more  strenuously  pressed  him  than  myself,  from 
a  'conviction  of  the  importance  of  strengthening,  by  longer  habit, 


CORRESPONDENCE.  293 

the  respect  necessary  for  that  office,  which  the  weight  of  his  char- 
acter only  coiild  effect.  When,  at  the  end  of  this  second  term, 
his  Valedictory  came  out,  Mr.  Madison  recognized  in  it  several 
passages  of  his  draught,  several  others,  we  were  both  satisfied, 
were  from  the  pen  of  Hamilton,  and  others  from  that  of  the  Pres- 
ident himself.  These  he  probably  put  into  the  hands  of  Hamil- 
ton to  form  into  a  whole,  and  hence  it  may  all  appear  in  Hamil- 
ton's hand-writing,  as  if  it  were  all  of  his  composition. 

I  have  stated  above,  that  the  original  objects  of  the  federalists 
were,  1st,  to  warp  our  government  more  to  the  form  and  princi- 
ples of  monarchy,  and,  2d,  to  weaken  the  barriers  of  the  State 
governments  as  coordinate  powers.  In  the  first  they  have  been 
so  completely  foiled  by  the  universal  spirit  of  the  nation,  that 
they  have  abandoned  the  enterprise,  shrunk  from  the  odium  of 
their  old  appellation,  taken  to  themselves  a  participation  of  ours, 
and  under  the  pseudo-republican  mask,  are  now  aiming  at  their 
second  object,  and  strengthened  by  unsuspecting  or  apostate  re- 
cruits from  our  ranks,  are  advancing  fast  towards  an  ascendancy. 
I  have  been  blamed  for  saying,  that  a  prevalence  of  the  doc- 
trines of  consolidation  would  one  day  call  for  reformation  or  rev- 
olution. I  answer  by  asking  if  a  single  State  of  the  Union 
would  have  agreed  to  the  constitution,  had  it  given  all  powers 
to  the  General  Government  ?  If  the  whole  opposition  to  it  did 
not  proceed  from  the  jealousy  and  fear  of  every  State,  of  being 
subjected  to  the  other  States  in  matters  merely  its  own  ?  And 
if  there  is  any  reason  to  believe  the  States  more  disposed  now 
than  then,  to  acquiesce  in  this  general  surrender  of  all  their 
rights  and  powers  to  a  consolidated  government,  one  and  undi- 
vided ? 

You  request  me  confidentially,  to  examine  the  question,  wheth- 
er the  Supreme  Court  has  advanced  beyond  its  constitutional 
hmits,  and  trespassed  on  those  of  the  State  authorities  ?  I  do 
not  undertake  it,  my  dear  Sir,  because  I  am  unable.  Age  and 
the  wane  of  mind  consequent  on  it,  have  disqualified  me  from 
investigations  so  severe,  and  researches  so  laborious.  And  it  is 
the  less  necessary  in  this  case,  as  having  been  already  done  by 


294  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

others  with  a  logic  and  learning  to  which  I  could  add  nothing 
On  the  decision  of  the  case  of  Cohens  vs.  The  State  of  Virginiai 
in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  in  March,  1821, 
Judge  Roane,  under  the  signature  of  Algernon  Sidney,  wrote  for 
the  Enquirer  a  series  of  papers  on  the  law  of  that  case.  I  con- 
sidered these  papers  maturely  as  they  came  out,  and  confess  that 
ihey  appeared  to  me  to  pulverize  every  word  which  had  been 
delivered  by  Judge  Marshall,  of  the  extra-judicial  part  of  his 
opinion  ;  and  all  was  extra-judicial,  except  the  decision  that  the 
act  of  Congress  had  not  purported  to  give  to  the  corporation  of 
Washington  the  authority  claimed  by  their  lottery  law,  of  con- 
trolling the  laws  of  the  States  within  the  States  themselves.  But 
unable  to  claim  that  case,  he  could  not  let  it  go  entirely,  but 
went  on  gratuitously  to  prove,  that  notwithstanding  the  eleventh 
amendment  of  the  constitution,  a  State  could  be  brought  as  a  de- 
fendant, to  the  bar  of  his  court ;  and  again,  that  Congress  might 
authorize  a  corporation  of  its  territory  to  exercise  legislation 
within  a  State,  and  paramount  to  the  laws  of  that  State.  I  cite 
the  sum  and  result  only  of  his  doctrines,  according  to  the  impres- 
sion made  on  my  mind  at  the  time,  and  still  remaining.  If  not 
strictly  accurate  in  circumstance,  it  is  so  in  substance.  This  doc- 
trine was  so  completely  refuted  by  Roane,  that  if  he  can  be  an- 
swered, I  surrender  human  reason  as  a  vain  and  useless  faculty, 
given  to  bewilder,  and  not  to  guide  us.  And  I  mention  this  par- 
ticular case  as  one  only  of  several,  because  it  gave  occasion  to 
that  thorough  examination  of  the  constitutional  limits  between 
the  General  and  State  jurisdictions,  which  you  have  asked  for. 
There  were  two  other  writers  in  the  same  paper,  under  the  sig- 
natures of  Fletcher  of  Saltoun,  and  Somers,  who,  in  a  few  es- 
says, presented  some  very  luminous  and  striking  views  of  the 
question.  And  there  was  a  particular  paper  which  recapitulated 
all  the  cases  in  which  it  was  thought  the  federal  court  had 
usurped  on  the  State  jurisdictions.  These  essays  will  be  found 
in  the  Enquirers  of  1821,  from  May  the  10th  to  July  the  13th. 
It  is  not  in  my  present  power  to  send  them  to  you,  but  if  Ritchie 
can  furnish  them,  I  will  procure  and  forward  them.     If  they 


OORRESPONDENOE.  295 

had  been  read  in  the  other  States,  as  they  were  here,  I  think 
they  would  have  left,  there  as  here,  no  dissentients  from  then 
do'-trine.  The  subject  was  taken  up  by  our  legislature  of 
1821— '22,  and  two  draughts  of  remonstrances  were  prepared 
and  discussed.  As  well  as  I  remember,  there  was  no  difference 
of  opinion  as  to  the  matter  of  right ;  but  there  was  as  to  the 
expediency  of  a  remonstrance  at  that  time,  the  general  mind  of 
the  States  being  then  under  extraordinary  excitement  by  the 
Missouri  question  ;  and  it  was  dropped  on  that  consideration. 
But  this  case  is  not  dead,  it  only  sleepeth.  The  Indian  Chief 
said  he  did  not  go  to  war  for  every  petty  injury  by  itself,  but  put 
it  into  his  pouch,  and  when  that  was  full,  he  then  made  war. 
Thank  Heaven,  we  have  provided  a  more  peaceable  and  rational 
mode  of  redress. 

This  practice  of  Judge  Marshall,  of  travelling  out  of  his  case 
to  prescribe  what  the  law  would  be  in  a  moot  case  not  before 
the  court,  is  very  irregular  and  very  censurable.  1  recollect  an- 
other instance,  and  the  more  particularly,  perhaps,  because  it  in 
some  measure  bore  on  myself.  Among  the  midnight  appoint- 
tnents  of  Mr.  Adams,  were  commissions  to  some  federal  justices 
of  the  peace  for  Alexandria.  These  were  signed  and  sealed  by 
him,  but  not  delivered.  I  found  them  on  the  table  of  the  de- 
partment of  State,  on  my  entrance  into  office,  and  I  forbade  their 
delivery.  Marbury,  named  in  one  of  them,  applied  to  the  Su- 
preme Court  for  a  mandamus  to  the  Secretary  of  State,  (Mr. 
Madison)  to  deliver  the  commission  intended  for  him.  The 
Court  determined  at  once,  that  being  an  original  process,  they  had 
no  cognizance  of  it ;  and  therefore  the  question  before  them  was 
ended.  But  the  Chief  Justice  went  on  to  lay  down  what  the 
law  would  be,  had  they  jurisdiction  of  the  case,  to-wit :  that  they 
should  command  the  delivery.  The  object  was  clearly  to  in- 
struct any  other  court  having  the  jurisdiction,  what  they  should 
do  if  Marbury  should  apply  to  them.  Besides  the  impropriety 
of  this  gratuitous  interference,  could  anj^thing  exceed  the  perver- 
sion of  law  ?  For  if  there  is  any  principle  of  law  never  yet  con- 
tradicted, it  is  that  delivery  is  one  of  the  essentials  to  the  validity 


296  JEFFERSOIT'S    WORKS. 

of  a  deed.  Although  signed  and  sealed,  yet  as  long  as  it  remains 
in  the  hands  of  the  party  himself,  it  is  in  fieri  only,  it  is  not  a 
deed,  and  can  be  made  so  only  by  its  delivery.  In  the  hands  of 
a  third  person  it  may  be  made  an  escrow.  But  whatever  is  in 
the  executive  ofRces  is  certainly  deemed  to  be  in  the  hands  of 
the  President ;  and  in  this  case,  was  actually  in  my  hands,  be- 
cause, when  I  countermanded  them,  there  was  as  yet  no  Secre- 
tary of  State.  Yet  this  case  of  Marbury  and  Madison  is  con- 
tinually cited  by  bench  and  bar,  as  if  it  were  settled  law,  with- 
out any  animadversion  on  its  being  merely  an  obiter  dissertation 
of  the  Chief  Justice. 

It  may  be  impracticable  to  lay  down  any  general  formula  of 
words  which  shall  decide  at  once,  and  with  precision,  in  every 
case,  this  limit  of  jurisdiction.  But  there  are  two  canons  which 
will  guide  us  safely  in  most  of  the  cases.  1st.  The  capital  and 
leading  object  of  the  constitution  was  to  leave  with  the  States 
all  authorities  which  respected  their  own  citizens  only,  and  to 
transfer  to  the  United  States  those  which  respected  citizens  of 
foreign  or  other  States :  to  make  us  several  as  to  ourselves,  but 
one  as  to  all  others.  In  the  latter  case,  then,  constructions  should 
lean  to  the  general  jurisdiction,  if  the  words  will  bear  it ;  and  in 
favor  of  the  States  in  the  former,  if  possible  to  be  so  construed. 
And  indeed,  between  citizens  and  citizens  of  the  same  State,  and 
under  their  own  laws,  I  know  but  a  single  case  in  which  a  juris- 
diction is  given  to  the  General  Government.  That  is,  where 
anything  but  gold  or  silver  is  made  a  lawful  tender,  or  the  obli- 
gation of  contracts  is  any  otherwise  impaired.  The  separate  leg- 
islatures had  so  often  abused  that  power,  that  the  citizens  them- 
selves chose  to  trust  it  to  the  general,  rather  than  to  their  own 
si;ecial  authorities.  2d.  On  every  question  of  construction,  carry 
ourselves  back  to  the  time  when  the  constitution  was  adopted, 
recollect  the  spirit  manifested  in  the  debates,  aud  instead  of  try- 
ing what  meaning  may  be  squeezed  out  of  the  text,  or  invented 
against  it,  conform  to  the  probable  one  in  which  it  was  passed. 
Let  us  try  Cohen's  case  by  these  canons  only,  referring  tdways, 
however,  for  full  argument,  to  the  essays  before  cited. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  297 

^.  It  was  between  a  citizen  and  his  own  State,  and  under  a 
law  of  his  State.  It  was  a  domestic  case,  therefore,  and  not  a 
foreign  one. 

2.  Can  it  be  beheved,  that  under  the  jealousies  prevailing 
against  the  General  Government,  at  the  adoption  of  the  constitu- 
tion, the  States  meant  to  surrender  the  authority  of  preserving 
order,  of  enforcing  moral  duties  and  restraining  vice,  within  their 
own  territory  ?  And  this  is  the  present  case,  that  of  Cohen  being 
under  the  ancient  and  general  law  of  gaming.  Can  any  good 
be  effected  by  taking  from  the  States  the  moral  rule  of  their 
citizens,  and  subordinating  it  to  the  general  authority,  or  to  one 
of  their  corporations,  which  may  justify  forcing  the  meaning  of 
words,  hunting  after  possible  constructions,  and  hanging  infer- 
ence on  inference,  from  heaven  to  earth,  like  Jacob's  ladder  ? 
Sach  an  intention  was  impossible,  and  such  a  licentiousness  of 
construction  and  inference,  if  exercised  by  both  governments,  as 
may  be  done  with  equal  right,  would  equally  authorize  both  to 
claim  all  power,  general  and  particular,  and  break  up  the  founda- 
tions of  the  Union.  Laws  are  made  for  men  of  ordinary  under- 
standing, and  should,  therefore,  be  construed  by  the  ordinary  rules 
of  common  sense.  Their  meaning  is  not  to  be  sought  for  in 
metaphysical  subtleties,  which  may  make  anything  mean  every- 
thing or  nothing,  at  pleasure.  It  should  be  left  to  the  sophisms 
of  advocates,  whose  trade  it  is,  to  prove  that  a  defendant  is  a 
plaintiff,  though  dragged  into  court,  torto  collo,  like  Bonaparte's 
volunteers,  into  the  field  in  chains,  or  that  a  power  has  been 
given,  because  it  ought  to  have  been  given,  et  alia  talia.  The 
States  supposed  that  by  their  tenth  amendment,  they  had  secured 
themselves  against  constructive  powers.  They  were  not  lessoned 
yet  by  Cohen's  case,  nor  aware  of  the  slipperiness  of  the  eels  of 
the  law.  I  ask  for  no  straining  of  words  against  the  General 
Government,  nor  yet  against  the  States.  I  believe  the  States  can 
best  govern  our  home  concerns,  and  ^he  General  Government  om* 
foreign  ones.  I  wish,  therefore,  to  see  maintained  that  whole- 
some distribution  of  powers  established  by  the  constitution  for 
the  limitation  of  both  ;  and  never  to  see  all  offices  transferred  to 


2y8  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Washington,  where,  further  withdrawn  from  the  eyes  of  the  peo. 
pie,  they  may  more  secretly  be  bought  and  sold  as  at  market. 

Bat  the  Chief  Justice  says,  "  there  must  be  an  ultimate  arbiter 
somewhere."  True,  there  must ;  but  does  that  prove  it  is  either 
party  ?  The  ultimate  arbiter  is  the  people  of  the  Utiion,  as- 
sembled by  their  deputies  in  convention,  at  the  call  of  Congress, 
or  of  two-thirds  of  the  States.  Let  them  decide  to  which  they 
mean  to  give  an  authority  claimed  by  two  of  their  organs.  And 
it  has  been  the  peculiar  wisdom  and  felicity  of  our  constitution, 
to  have  provided  this  peaceable  appeal,  where  that  of  other  na- 
tions is  at  once  to  force. 

I  rejoice  in  the  example  you  set  of  seriatim  opinions.  I  have 
heard  it  often  noticed,  and  always  with  high  approbation.  Some 
of  your  brethren  will  be  encouraged  to  follow  it  occasionally, 
and  in  time,  it  may  be  felt  by  all  as  a  duty,  and  the  sound  prac- 
tice of  the  primitive  court  be  again  restored.  Why  should  not 
every  judge  be  asked  his  opinion,  and  give  it  from  the  bench,  if 
only  by  yea  or  nay  ?  Besides  ascertaining  the  fact  of  his  opin- 
ion, which  the  public  have  a  right  to  know,  in  order  to  judge 
whether  it  is  impeachable  or  not,  it  would  show  whether  the 
opinions  were  unanimous  or  not,  and  thus  settle  more  exactly 
the  weight  of  their  authority. 

The  close  of  my  second  sheet  warns  me  that  it  is  time  now 
to  relieve  you  from  this  letter  of  unmerciful  length.  Indeed,  I 
wonder  how  I  have  accomplished  it,  with  two  crippled  wrists, 
the  one  scarcely  able  to  move  my  pen,  the  other  to  hold  my  pa- 
per. But  I  am  hurried  sometimes  beyond  the  sense  of  pain, 
when  unbosoming  myself  to  friends  who  harmonize  with  me 
in  principle.  You  and  I  may  dilier  occasionally  in  details  of 
minor  consetpence,  as  no  two  minds,  more  than  two  faces,  are 
the  same  in  every  feature.  But  our  general  objects  arc  the  same, 
to  preserve  the  republican  form  and  principles  of  our  constitution 
and  cleave  to  the  salutary  distribution  of  powers  which  that  has 
estabhshed.  These  are  the  two  sheet  anchors  of  our  Union.  If 
driven  from  either,  we  shall  be  in  danger  of  foundering.  To  my 
prayers  for  its  safety  and  perpetuity,  I  add  those  for  the  continua- 
tion of  your  health,  happiness,  and  usefulness  to  your  country. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  299 


TO    PRESIDENT    MONEOE. 

MoNTicBLi.o,  June  23,  1823. 

Deah  Sir, — I  have  been  lately  visited  by  a  Mr.  Miralla,  a  na- 
tive of  Buenos  Ayres,  but  resident  in  Cuba  for  the  last  seven  or 
eight  years ;  a  person  of  intelligence,  of  much  information,  and 
frankly  communicative.  I  believe,  indeed,  he  is  known  to  you. 
I  availed  myself  of  the  opportunity  of  learning  what  was  the 
state  of  public  sentiment  in  Cuba  as  to  their  future  course.  He 
says  they  would  be  satisfied  to  remain  as  they  are ;  but  all  are 
sensible  that  that  cannot  be ;  that  whenever  circumstances  shall 
render  a  separation  from  Spain  necessary,  a  perfect  independance 
would  be  their  choice,  provided  they  could  see  a  certainty  of 
protection ;  but  that,  without  that  prospect,  they  would  be  divid- 
ed in  opinion  between  an  incorporation  with  Mexico,  and  with 
the  United  States. — Columbia  being  too  remote  for  prompt  sup- 
port. The  considerations  in  favor  of  Mexico  are  that  the  Hav- 
ana would  be  the  emporium  for  all  the  produce  of  that  immense 
and  wealthy  country,  and  of  course,  the  medium  of  all  its  com- 
merce ;  that  having  no  ports  on  its  eastern  coast,  Cuba  would 
become  the  depot  of  its  naval  stores  and  strength,  and,  in  effect, 
would,  in  a  great  measure,  have  the  sinews  of  the  government  in 
its  hands.  That  in  favor  of  the  United  States  is  the  fact  that 
three-fourths  of  the  exportations  from  Havana  come  to  the  Unit- 
ed States,  that  they  are  a  settled  government,  the  power  which  can 
most  promptly  succor  them,  rising  to  an  eminence  promising 
future  security ;  and  of  which  they  would  make  a  member  of  the 
sovereigntv,  while  as  to  England,  they  would  be  only  a  colony, 
subordinated  to  her  interest,  and  that  there  is  not  a  man  in  the 
island  who  would  not  resist  her  to  the  bitterest  extremity.  Of 
this  last  sentiment  I  had  not  the  least  idea  at  the  date  of  my  late 
letters  to  you.  I  had  supposed  an  English  interest  there  quite  as 
strong  as  that  of  the  United  States,  and  therefore,  that,  to  avoid 
war,  and  keep  the  island  open  to  our  own  commerce,  it  would 
be  best  to  join  that  power  in  mutually  guaranteeing  its  independ- 
ence.    But  if  there  is  no  danger  of  its  falling  into  the  possession 


300  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

of  England,  I  must  retract  an  opinion  founded  on  an  error  of 
fact.  We  are  surely  under  no  obligation  to  give  her,  gratis,  an 
interest  which  she  has  not ;  and  the  whole  inhabitants  being 
averse  to  her,  and  the  climate  mortal  to  strangers,  its  continued 
military  occupation  by  her  would  be  impracticable.  It  is  better 
then  to  lie  still  in  readiness  to  receive  that  interesting  incorpora- 
tion when  solicited  by  herself.  For,  certainly,  her  addition  to 
our  confederacy  is  exactly  what  is  wanting  to  round  our  power 
as  a  nation  to  the  point  of  its  utmost  interest. 

I  have  thought  it  my  duty  to  acknowledge  my  error  on  this 
occasion,  and  to  repeat  a  truth  before  acknowledged,  that,  retired 
as  I  am,  I  know  too  little  of  the  affairs  of  the  world  to  form 
opinions  of  them  worthy  of  any  attention  ;  and  I  resign  myself 
with  reason,  and  perfect  confidence  to  the  care  and  guidance  of 
those  to  whom  the  helm  is  committed.  With  this  assurance,  ac- 
cept that  of  my  constant  and  affectionate  friendship  and  respect. 


TO    GEOEGE    TICKNOK. 

MoNTiCKLLO,  July  16,  1823. 

Dear  Sir, — I  received  in  due  time  your  favor  of  June  16th, 
and  with  it  your  Syllabus  of  lectures  on  Spanish  literature.  I 
have  considered  this  with  great  interest  and  satisfaction,  as  it 
gives  me  a  model  of  course  I  wish  to  see  pursued  in  the  different 
branches  of  instruction  in  our  University,  i.  e.  a  methodical, 
critical,  and  profotmd  explanation  by  way  of  protection  of  every 
science  we  propose  to  teach.  I  am  not  fully  informed  of  the 
practices  at  Harvard,  but  there  is  one  from  which  we  shall  cer- 
tainly vary,  although  it  has  been  copied,  I  believe,  by  nearly 
every  college  and  academy  in  the  United  States.  That  is,  the 
holding  the  students  all  to  one  prescribed  course  of  reading,  and 
disallowing  exclusive  application  to  those  branches  only  which 
are  to  qualify  them  for  the  particular  vocations  to  wJiich  they 
are  destined.  We  shall,  on  the  contrary,  allow  them  uncontroled 
choice  in  the  lectm-es  they  shall  choose  to  attend,  and  requir* 


C  0  R  R  E  S  P  O  K  D  E  N  C  E .  301 

elementary  qualification  only,  and  sufficient  age.  Our  institu- 
tion will  proceed  on  the  principle  of  doing  all  the  good  it  can 
without  consulting  its  own  pride  or  ambition ;  of  letting  every 
one  come  and  listen  to  whatever  he  thinks  may  improve  the  con- 
dition of  his  mind.  The  rock  which  I  most  dread  is  the  disci- 
pline of  the  institution,  and  it  is  that  on  which  most  of  our  pub- 
lic schools  labor.  The  insubordination  of  our  youth  is  now  the 
greatest  obstacle  to  their  education.  We  may  lessen  the  difficul- 
ty, perhaps,  by  avoiding  too  much  government,  by  requiring  no 
useless  observances,  none  which  shall  merely  multiply  occasions 
for  dissatisfaction,  disobedience  and  revolt  by  referring  to  the 
more  discreet  of  themselves  the  minor  discipline,  the  graver  to 
the  civil  magistrates,  as  in  Edinburg.  On  this  head  I  am  anxious 
for  information  of  the  practices  of  other  places,  having  myself 
had  little  experience  of  the  government  of  youth.  I  presume 
there  are  printed  codes  of  the  rules  of  Harvard,  and  if  so,  you 
would  oblige  me  by  sending  me  a  copy,  and  of  those  of  any 
other  academy  which  you  think  can  furnish  anything  useful. 
You  flatter  me  with  a  visit  "as  soon  as  you  learn  that  the  Uni- 
versity is  fairly  opened."  A  visit  from  you  at  any  time  will  be 
the  most  welcome  possible  to  all  our  family,  who  remember  with 
peculiar  satisfaction  the  pleasure  they  received  from  your  former 
one.  But  were  I  allowed  to, name  the  time,  it  should  not  be  de- 
ferred beyond  the  autumn  of  the  ensuing  year.  Our  last  build- 
ing, and  that  which  will  be  the  principal  ornament  and  keystone, 
giving  unity  to  the  whole,  will  then  be  nearly  finished,  and  af- 
ford you  a  gratification  compensating  the  trouble  of  the  journey. 
We  shall  then,  also,  be  engaged  in  our  code  of  regulations  pre- 
paratory to  our  opening,  which  may,  perhaps,  take  place  in  the 
beginning  of  1825.  There  is  no  person  from  whose  information 
of  the  European  institutions,  and  especially  their  disciphne,  I 
should  expect  so  much  aid  in  that  difficult  work.  Come,  then, 
dear  Sir,  at  that,  or  any  earlier  epoch,  and  give  to  our  institution 
the  benefit  of  your  counsel.  I  know  that  you  scout,  as  I  do. 
the  idea  of  any  rivalship.  Our  views  are  Catholic  for  the  im- 
provement  of  our  country  by  science,  and   indeed,  it  is  better 


802  .lEFFEESOK'S    WORKS. 

even  for  your  own  University  to  have  its  yoke  nate  at  this  dis- 
tance, rather  than  to  force  a  nearer  one  from  the  increasing  ne- 
cessity for  it.  And  how  long  before  we  may  expect  others  in 
the  southern,  western,  and  middle  regions  of  this  vast  country? 

I  send  you  by  mail  a  print  of  the  ground-plan  of  our  institu- 
tion ;  it  may  give  you  some  idea  of  its  distribution  and  conven- 
iences, but  not  of  its  architecture,  which  being  chastely  classical, 
constitutes  one  of  its  distinguishing  characters.  I  am  much  in- 
debted for  your  kind  attentions  to  Mr.  Harrison ;  he  is  a  youth 
of  promise.  I  could  not  deny  myself  the  gratification  of  com- 
municating to  his  father  the  part  of  your  letter  respecting  him. 

Our  family  all  join  me  in  assurances  of  our  friendly  esteem 
and  great  respect. 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFERSON. 

QoiNcv,  August  15,  1823. 

Watchman,  what  of  the  night  ?  Is  darkness  that  may  be  felt, 
to  prevail  over  the  whole  world  ?  or  can  you  perceive  any  rays 
of  a  returning  dawn  ?  Is  the  devil  to  be  the  "  Lord's  anointed" 
over  the  whole  globe  ?  or  do  you  foresee  the  fulfilment  of  the 
prophecies  according  to  Dr.  Priestley's  interpretation  of  them  ?  I 
know  not,  but  I  have  in  some  of  my  familiar,  and  frivolous  let- 
ters to  you,  told  the  story  four  times  over ;  but  if  I  have,  I  never 
applied  it  so  well  as  now. 

Not  long  after  the  denouement  of  the  tragedy  of  Louis  XTI, 
when  I  was  Vice-President,  my  friend  the  Doctor  came  to  break- 
fast with  me  alone  ;  he  was  very  sociable,  very  learned  and  elo- 
quent, on  the  subject  of  the  French  revolution.  It  was  opening 
a  new  era  in  the  world,  and  presenting  a  near  view  of  the  mil- 
lennium. I  listened ;  I  heard  with  great  attention  and  per- 
fect sang  froid.  At  last  I  asked  the  Doctor.  Do  you  really 
believe  the  French  will  establish  a  free  democratical  government 
in  France  ?  He  answered :  I  do  firmly  believe  it.  Will  you 
give  me  leave  to  ask  you  upon  what  grounds  you  entertain  this 


CORRESPONDENCE.  303 

opinion?  Is  it  from  anything  you  ever  read  in  history?  Is 
there  any  instance  of  a  Roman  Catholic  monarchy  of  five  and 
twenty  millions  at  once  converted  into  a  free  and  national  people  ? 
No.  I  know  of  no  instance  like  it.  Is  there  anything  in  your 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  derived  from  books,  or  experience, 
that  any  nation,  ancient  or  modern,  consisting  of  such  multitudes 
of  ignorant  people,  ever  were,  or  ever  can  be  converted  suddenly 
into  materials  capable  of  conducting  a  free  government,  especial^ 
ly  a  democratical  republic  ?  No — I  know  nothing  of  the  kind. 
Well  then.  Sir,  what  is  the  ground  of  your  opinion  ?  The  an- 
swer was,  my  opinion  is  founded  altogether  upon  revelation,  and 
the  prophecies.  I  take  it  that  the  ten  horns  of  the  great  beast  in 
revelations,  mean  the  ten  crowned  heads  of  Europe  ;  and  that  the 
execution  of  the  King  of  France,  is  the  falling  oif  of  the  first  of 
those  horns ;  and  the  nine  monarchies  of  Europe  will  fall  one  af- 
ter another  in  the  same  way.  Such  was  the  enthusiasm  of  that 
great  man,  that  reasoning  machine.  After  all,  however,  he  did 
recollect  hirtiself  so  far  as  to  say  :  There  is,  however,  a  possibili- 
ty of  doubt ;  for  I  read  yesterday  a  book  put  into  my  hands,  by 
a  gentleman,  a  volume  of  travels  written  by  a  French  gentleman 
in  1659  ;  in  which  he  says  he  had  been  travelling  a  whole  year 
in  England;  into  every  part  of  it,  and  conversed  freely  with  all 
ranks  of  people ;  he  found  the  whole  nation  earnestly  engaged  in 
discussing  and  contriving  a  form  of  government  for  their  future 
regulations ;  there  was  but  one  point  in  which  they  all  agreed, 
and  in  that  they  were  unanimous:  that  monarchy,  nobility," 
and  prelacy  never  would  exist  in  England  again.  The  Doctor 
paused ;  and  said  :  Yet,  in  the  very  next  year,  the  whole  nation 
called  in  the  King  and  run  mad  with  nobility,  monarchy,  and 
prelacy.  I  am  no  King  killer ;  merely  because  they  are  Kings. 
Poor  creatures;  they  know  no  better ;  they  believe  sincerely  and 
conscientiously  that  God  made  them  to  rule  the  world.  I  would 
not,  therefore,  behead  them,  or  send  them  to  St.  Helena,  to  be 
ti'eated  as  Bonaparte  was ;  but  I  would  shut  them  up  like  the 
man  in  the  iron  mask  ;  feed  them  well,  give  them  as  much  finery 
as  they  pleased,  until  they  could  be  converted  to  right  reason  and 


304  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

common  sense.  I  have  nothing  to  communicate  from  this  part 
of  the  country,  except  that  you  must  not  be  surprised  if  you  hear 
something  wonderful  in  Boston  before  long.  With  my  profound 
respects  for  your  family,  and  half  a  century's  affection  for  your- 
self, I  am  your  humble  servant. 


TO    JAMES    MADISON. 

MoNTioKLi.o,  August  30,  182.S. 

DejVh  Sib, — I  received  the  enclosed  letters  from  the  President 
with  a  request,  that  after  perusal  I  would  forward  them  to  you 
for  perusal  by  yourself  also,  and  to  be  returned  then  to  him. 

You  have  doubtless  seen  Timothy  Pickerings'  fourth  of  July 
observations  on  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  If  his  princi- 
ples and  prejudices,  personal  and  political,  gave  us  no  reason  to 
doubt  whether  he  had  tridy  quoted  the  information  he  alleges  to 
have  received  from  Mr.  Adams,  I  should  then  say,  that  in  some 
of  the  particulars,  Mr.  Adams'  memory  has  led  him  into  unques- 
tionable error.  At  the  age  of  eighty-eight,  and  forty-seven  years 
after  the  transactions  of  Independence,  this  is  not  wonderful. 
Nor  should  I,  at  the  age  of  eighty,  on  the  small  advantage  of 
that  difference  only,  venture  to  oppose  my  memory  to  his,  were 
it  not  supported  by  written  notes,  taken  by  myself  at  the  mo- 
ment and  on  the  spot.  He  says,  "  the  committee  of  five,  to  wit, 
Dr.  Franklin,  Sherman,  Livingston,  and  ourselves,  met,  discussed 
the  subject,  and  then  appointed  him  and  myself  to  make  the 
draught  ;  that  we,  as  a  sub-committee,  met,  and  after  the  urgen- 
cies of  each  on  the  other,  I  consented  to  undertake  the  task ;  that 
the  draught  being  made,  we,  the  sub-committee,  met,  and  conned 
the  paper  over,  and  he  does  not  remember  that  he  made  or  sug- 
gested a  single  alteration."  Now  these  details  are  quite  incor- 
rect The  committee  of  five  met ;  no  such  thing  as  a  sub-com- 
mittee was  proposed,  but  they  unanimously  pressed  on  myself 
alone  to  undertake  the  draught.  I  consented ;  I  drew  it ;  but  be- 
fore I  reported  it  to  the  committee,  I  communicated  it  separately 


COERESPONDENOE.  305 

to  Dr.  Franklin  and  Mr.  Adams,  requesting  their  corrections,  be- 
cause they  were  the  two  members  of  whose  judgments  and 
amendments  I  wished  most  to  have  the  benefit,  before  presenting 
it  to  the  committee  ;  and  you  have  seen  the  original  paper  now 
in  my  hands,  with  the  corrections  of  Dr.  Franklin  and  Mr.  Adams 
interlined  in  their  own  hand  writings.  Their  alterations  were 
two  or  three  only,  and  merely  verbal.  I  then  wrote  a  fair  copy, 
reported  it  to  the  committee,  and  from  them,  unaltered,  to  Con- 
gress. ■  This  personal  communication  and  consultation  with  Mr. 
Adams,  he  has  misremembered  into  the  actings  of  a  sub-commit- 
tee. Pickering's  observations,  and  Mr.  Adams'  in  addition,  "  thac 
it  contained  no  new  ideas,  that  it  is  a  common-place  compilation, 
its  sentiments  hacknied  in  Congress  for  two  years  before,  and  its 
essence  contained  in  Otis'  pamphlet,"  may  all  be  true.  Of  that 
I  am  not  to  be  the  judge.  Richard  Henry  Lee  charged  it  as 
copied  from  Locke's  treatise  on  government.  Otis'  pamphlet  I 
never  saw,  and  whether  I  had  gathered  my  ideas  from  reading 
or.reflection  I  do  not  know.  I  know  only  that  I  turned  to  neither 
book  nor  pamphlet  while  writing  it.  I  did  not  consider  it  as 
any  part  of  my  charge  to  invent  new  ideas  altogether,  and  to  of- 
fer no  sentiment  which  had  ever  been  expressed  before.  Had 
Mr.  Adams  been  so  restrained.  Congress  would  have  lost  the 
benefit  of  his  bold  and  impressive  advocations  of  the  rights  of 
Revolution.  For  no  man's  confident  and  fervid  addresses,  more 
than  Mr.  Adams',  encouraged  and  supported  us  through  the  difii- 
culties  surromding  us,  which,  like  the  ceaseless  action  of  gravity 
weighed  on  us  by  night  and  by  day.  Yet,  on  the  same  ground, 
we  may  ask  what  of  these  elevated  thoughts  was  new,  or  can  be 
affirmed  never  before  to  have  entered  the  conceptions  of  man  ? 

Whether,  also,  the  sentiments  of  Independence,  and  the  reasons 
for  declaring  it,  which  make  so  great  a  portion  of  the  instrument, 
had  been  hackneyed  in  Congress  for  two  years  before  the  4th  of 
July,  '76,  or  this  dictum  also  of  Mr.  Adams  be  another  slip  of  me- 
mory, let  history  say.  This,  however,  I  will  say  for  Mr.  Adams, 
that  he  supported  the  Declaration  with  zeal  and  ability,  fighting 
fearlessly  for  every  word  of  it.     As  to  myself,  I  thought  it  a  duty 

VOL.  vn.  20 


306  JEFFERSON'S   WORKb. 

to  be,  on  that  occasion,  a  passive  auditor  of  the  opinions  of  others 
more  impartial  judges  than  I  could  be,  of  its  merits  or  demerits 
During  the  debate  I  was  sitting  by  Doctor  Franklin,  and  he  ob- 
served that  I  was  writhing  a  little  under  the  acrimonious  criti- 
cisms on  some  of  its  parts ;  and  it  was  on  that  occasion,  that  by- 
way of  comfort,  he  told  me  the  story  of  John  Thompson,  the 
liatter,  and  his  new  sign. 

Timothy  thinks  the  instrument  the  better  for  having  a  fourth 
of  it  expunged.  He  would  have  thought  it  still  better,  had  the 
other  three-fourths  gone  out  also,  all  but  the  single  sentiment 
(the  only  one  he  approves),  which  recommends  friendship  to  his 
dear  England,  whenever  she  is  willing  to  be  at  peace  with  us. 
His  insinuations  are,  that  although  "  the  high  tone  of  the  instru- 
ment was  in  unison  with  the  warm  feelings  of  the  times,  this 
sentiment  of  habitual  friendship  to  England  should  never  be  for- 
gotten, and  that  the  duties  it  enjoins  should  especially  be  borne 
in  mind  on  every  celebration  of  this  anniversary."  In  other 
words,  that  the  Declaration,  as  being  a  libel  on  the  government 
of  England,  composed  in  times  of  passion,  should  now  be  buried 
in  utter  oblivion,  to  spare  the  feelings  of  our  English  friends  and 
Angloman  fellow-citizens.  But  it  is  not  to  wound  them  that  we 
wish  to  keep  it  in  mind ;  but  to  cherish  the  principles  of  the  in- 
strument in  the  bosoms  of  our  own  citizens :  and  it  is  a  heavenly 
comfort  to  see  that  these  principles  are  yet  so  strongly  felt,  as  to 
render  a  circumstance  so  trifling  as  this  little  lapse  of  memory 
of  Mr.  Adams,"  worthy  of  being  solemnly  announced  and  sup- 
ported at  an  anniversary  assemblage  of  the  nation  on  its  birth- 
day. In  opposition,  however,  to  Mr.  Pickering,  I  pray  God  that 
these  principles  may  be  eternal,  and  close  the  prayer  with  my 
affectionate  wishes  for  yourself  of  long  life,  health  and  happiness. 


OORRESPOKDENuE.  307 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTiCf;n.o,  September  4,  1823. 

Deak  Sie, — Your  letter  of  August  the  15th  was  received  in 
due  time,  and  with  the  welcome  of  everything  which  comes 
fro  fl  you.  With  its  opinions  on  the  difficulties  of  revolutions 
fro/a  despotism  to  freedom,  I  very  much  concur.  The  genera- 
tion which  commences  a  revolution  rarely  completes  it.  Habitu- 
ated from  their  infancy  to  passive  submission  of  body  and  mind 
to  their  kings  and  priests,  they  are  not  qualified  when  called  on 
to  think  and  provide  for  themselves ;  and  their  inexperience, 
their  ignorance  and  bigotry  make  them  instruments  often,  in  the 
hands  of  the  Bonapartes  and  Iturbides,  to  defeat  their  own  rights 
and  purposes.  This  is  the  present  situation  of  Europe  and  Span- 
ish America.  But  it  is  not  desperate.  The  light  which  has 
been  shed  on  mankind  by  the  art  of  printing,  has  eminently 
changed  the  condition  of  the  world.  As  yet,  that  light  has 
dawned  on  the  middling  classes  only  of  the  men  in  Europe 
The  kings  and  the  rabble,  of  equal  ignorance,  have  not  yet  re- 
ceived its  rays ;  but  it  continues  to  spread,  and  while  printing  is 
pjeserved,  it  can  no  more  recede  than  the  sun  return  on  his  course. 
A  first  attempt  to  recover  the  right  of  self-government  may  fail, 
so  may  a  second,  a  third,  &c.  But  as  a  younger  and  more  in- 
structed race  comes  on,  the  sentiment  becomes  more  and  more 
intuitive,  and  a  fourth,  a  fifth,  or  some  subsequent  one  of  the 
ever  renewed  attempts  will  ultimately  succeed.  In  France,  the 
first  effort  was  defeated  by  Robespierre,  the  second  by  Bona- 
parte, the  third  by  Louis  XYIII.  and  his  holy  allies :  another  is 
yet  to  come,  and  all  Europe,  Russia  excepted,  has  caught  the 
spirit ;  and  all  will  attain  representative  government,  more  or 
less  perfect.  This  is  now  well  understood  to  be  a  necessary 
check  on  kings,  whom  they  will  probably  think  it  more  prudent 
to  chain  and  tame,  than  to  exterminate.  To  attain  all  this, 
however,  rivers  of  blood  must  yet  flow,  and  years  of  desolation 
pass  over ;  yet  the  object  is  worth  rivers  of  blood,  and  years  of 
desolation.     For  what  inheritance  so  valuable,  can  man  leave  to 


808  JEFFERSON'S    WOEES. 

his  posterity  ?  The  spirit  of  the  Spaniard,  and  his  deadly  and 
eternal  hatred  to  a  Frenchman,  give  me  much  confidence  that 
he  will  never  submit,  but  finally  defeat  this  atrocious  violation 
of  the  laws  of  God  and  man,  under  which  he  is  suffering ;  and 
the  wisdom  and  firmness  of  the  Cortes,  afford  reasonable  hope, 
that  that  nation  will  settle  down  in  a  temperate  representative 
government,  with  an  executive  properly  subordinated  to  that. 
Portugal,  Italy,  Prussia,  Germany,  Greece,  will  follow  suit, 
You  and  I  shall  look  down  from  another  world  on  these  glo- 
rious achievements  to  man,  which  will  add  to  the  joys  even 
of  heaven. 

I  observe  your  toast  of  Mr.  Jay  on  the  4th  of  July,  wherein 
you  say  that  the  omission  of  his  signature  to  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  by  accident.  Our  impressions  as  to  this  fact 
being  different,  I  shall  be  glad  to  have  mine  corrected,  if  wrong. 
Jay,  you  know,  had  been  in  constant  opposition  to  our  laboring 
majority.  Our  estimate  at  the  time  was,  that  he,  Dickinson  and 
Johnson  of  Maryland,  by  their  ingenuity,  perseverance  and  par- 
tiality to  our  English  connection,  had  constantly  kept  us  a  year 
behind  where  we  ought  to  have  been  in  our  preparations  and  pro- 
ceedings. From  about  the  date  of  the  Virginia  instructions  of 
May  the  15th,  1776,  to  declare  Independence,  Mr.  Jay  absented 
himself  from  Congress,  and  never  came  there  again  until  Decem- 
ber, 1778.  Of  course,  he  had  no  part  in  the  discussions  or  de- 
cision of  that  question.  The  instructions  to  their  Delegates  by 
the  Convention  of  New  York,  then  sitting,  to  sign  the  Declara- 
tion, were  presented  to  Congress  on  the  15th  of  July  only,  and 
on  that  day  the  journals  show  the  absence  of  Mr.  Jay,  by  a  let- 
ter received  from  him,  as  they  had  done  as  early  as  the  29th  of 
May  by  another  letter.  And  I  think  he  had  been  omitted  by 
the  convention  on  a  new  election  of  Delegates,  when  they 
changed  their  instructions.  Of  this  last  fact,  however,  having 
no  evidence  but  an  ancient  impression,  I  shall  not  affirm  it.  But 
whether  so  or  not,  no  agency  of  accident  appears  in  the  case. 
This  error  of  fact,  however,  whether  yours  or  mine,  is  of  little 


OOERESPONDENOE.  S09 

consequence  to  the  public.     But  truth  being  as  cheap  as  error,  it 
is  as  well  to  rectify  it  for  our  own  satisfaction. 

I  have  had  a  fever  of  about  three  weeks,  during  the  last  and 
preceding  month,  from  which  I  am  entirely  recovered  except  as 
to  strength. 


TO    WILLIAM    SHORT. 

MoNTioELLO,  September  8,  1823. 

Deab  Sik, — Your  favor  of  July  28th,  from  Avon,  came  to 
hand  on  the  10th  of  August,  and  I  have  delayed  answering  it 
on  the  presumption  of  your  continued  absence,  but  the  approach 
of  the  season  of  frost  in  that  region  has  probably  before  this 
time  turned  you  about  to  the  south.  I  readily  conceive  that  by 
the  time  of  your  return  to  Philadelphia,  you  will  have  had  trav- 
elling enough  for  the  present,  and  therefore  acquiesce  in  your 
proposition  to  give  us  the  next  season.  Your  own  convenience 
is  a  sufficient  reason,  and  an  auxiliary  one  is  that  we  shall  then 
have  more  for  you  to  see  and  approve.  By  that  time,  our  ro- 
tunda, (the  walls  of  which  will  be  finished  this  month)  will  have 
received  its  roof,  and  will  show  itself  externally  to  some  advan- 
tage. Its  columns  only  will  be  wanting,  as  they  must  await 
their  capitals  from  Italy.  We  have  just  received  from  thence, 
and  are  now  putting  up,  the  marble  capitals  of  the  buildings  we 
have  already  erected,  which  completes  our  whole  system,  except 
the  rotunda  and  its  adjacent  gymnasia.  All  are  now  ready  to 
receive  theii-  occupants,  and  should  the  legislature,  at  their  next 
session,  liberate  our  funds  as  is  hoped,  we  shall  ask  but  one  year 
more  to  procure  our  professors,  for  most  of  whom  we  must  go  to 
Europe.  In  your  substitution  of  Monticello  instead  of  your  an- 
nual visit  to  Black  Rock,  I  will  engage  you  equal  health,  and  a 
more  genial  and  pleasant  climate ;  but  instead  of  the  flitting, 
flirting,  and  gay  assemblage  of  that  place,  you  must  be  contented 
with  the  plain  and  sober  family  and  neighborly  society,  with  the 
assurance  that  you  shall  hear  no  wrangling  about  the  next  presi- 
dent, although  the  excitement  on  that  subject  will  then  be  at  its 


310  JEFFERSON'S    WOREiS. 

acme.  Numerous  have  been  the  attempts  to  entangle  me  in  thai 
imbroglio.  But  at  the  age  of  eighty,  I  seek  quiet  and  abjure 
contention.  I  read  but  a  single  newspaper,  Ritchie's  Enquirer, 
the  best  that  is  published  or  ever  has  been  published  in  America. 
You  should  read  it  also,  to  keep  yourself  au  fait  of  your  own 
State,  for  we  still  claim  you  as  belonging  to  us.  A  city  life  offers 
you  indeed  more  means  of  dissipating  time,  but  more  frequent, 
also,  and  more  painful  objects  of  vice  and  wretchedness.  New- 
York,  for  example,  like  London,  seems  to  be  a  Cloacina  of  all 
the  depravities  of  human  nature.  Philadelphia  doubtless  has  its 
share.  Here,  on  the  contrary,  crime  is  scarcely  heard  of,  breaches 
of  order  rare,  and  our  societies,  if  not  refined,  are  rational,  moral, 
and  affectionate  at  least.  Our  only  blot  is  becoming  less  offens- 
ive by  the  great  improvement  in  the  condition  and  civilization 
of  that  race,  who  can  now  more  advantageously  compare  their 
situation  with  that  of  the  laborers  of  Europe.  Still  it  is  a  hid- 
eous blot,  as  well  from  the  heteromorph  peculiarities  of  the  race, 
as  that,  with  them,  physical  compulsion  to  action  must  be  sub- 
stituted for  the  moral  necessity  which  constrains  the  free  laborers 
to  work  equally  hard.  We  feel  and  deplore  it  morally  and  polit- 
ically, and  we  look  without  entire  despair  to  some  redeeming 
means  not  yet  specifically  foreseen.  I  am  happy  in  believing 
that  the  conviction  of  the  necessity  of  removing  this  evil  gains 
ground  with  time.  Their  emigration  to  the  westward  lightens 
the  difficulty  by  dividing  it,  and  renders  it  more  practicable  on 
the  whole.  And  the  neighborhood  of  a  government  of  their 
color  promises  a  more  accessible  asylum  than  that  from  whence 
they  came.     Ever  and  affectionately  yours. 


TO    MB.    THOMAS    EARLE. 

MoNTiCELLO,  September  24,  1823. 

SiH, — Your  letter  of  August  28th,  with  the  pamphlet  ac- 
sompanying  it,  was  not  received  until  the  18th  instant. 

That  our  Creator  made  the  earth  for  the  use  of  the  living  and 


COREESPONDENCE.  311 

not  of  the  dead  ;  that  those  who  exist  not  can  have  no  use  nor 
right  in  it,  no  authority  or  power  over  it ;  that  one  generation 
of  men  cannot  foreclose  or  burthen  its  use  to  another,  which 
comes  to  it  in  its  own  right  and  by  the  same  divine  beneficence  ; 
that  a  preceding  generation  cannot  bind  a  succeeding  one  by  its 
laws  or  contracts  ;  these  deriving  their  obligation  from  the  will 
of  the  existing  majority,  and  that  majority  being  removed  by 
death,  another  comes  in  its  place  with  a  will  equally  free  to  make 
its  own  laws  and  contracts  ;  these  are  axioms  so  self-evident  that 
no  explanation  can  make  them  plainer  ;  for  he  is  not  to  be  reas- 
oned with  who  says  that  non-existence  can  control  existence,  or 
that  nothing  can  move  something.  They  are  axioms  also  preg- 
nant with  salutary  consequences.  The  laws  of  civil  society  in- 
deed for  the  encouragement  of  industry,  give  the  property  of  the 
parent  to  his  family  on  his  death,  and  in  most  civilized  countries 
permit  him  even  to  give  it,  by  testament,  to  whom  he  pleases. 
And  it  is  also  found  more  convenient  to  suffer  the  laws  of  our 
predecessors  to  stand  on  our  implied  assent,  as  if  positively  re- 
enacted,  until  the  existing  majority  positively  repeals  them.  But 
this  does  not  lessen  the  right  of  that  majority  to  repeal  whenever 
a  change  of  ch'cumstances  or  of  will  calls  for  it.  Habit  alone 
confounds  what  is  civil  practice  with  natural  right. 

On  the  merits  of  the  pamphlet  I  say  nothing  of  course  ;  having 
found  it  necessary  to  decline  giving  opinions  on  books  even 
when  desired.  For  the  functions  of  a  reviewer,  I  have  neither 
time,  talent,  nor  inclination,  and  I  trust  that  on  reflection  your 
indulgence  will  not  think  unreasonable  my  unwillingness  to  em- 
bark in  an  office  of  so  little  enticement.  With  my  thanks  for  the 
pamphlet,  be  pleased  to  accept  the  assurance  of  my  great  respect. 


TO    MB.     HUGH    P.    TATLOH. 

JIosTiOELLO,  October  4,  1 823. 

Sm, — You  must,  I  think,  have  somewhat  misunderstood  what 
[  may  have  said  to  you  as  to  manuscripts  in  my  possession  re- 


812  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

latmg  to  the  antiquities,  and  particularly  the  Indian  antiquities 
of  our  country.  The  only  manuscripts  I  now  possess  are  some 
folio  volumes,  two  of  these  are  the  proceedings  of  the  Virginia 
Company  in  England  ;  the  remaining  four  are  of  the  Records  of 
the  Council  of  Virginia  from  1622  to  1700.  The  account  of 
the  two  first  volumes  you  will  see  in  the  preface  to  Stith's  His- 
tory of  Virginia.  They  contain  the  records  of  the  Virginia  com- 
pany, copied  from  the  originals,  under  the  eye,  if  I  recollect 
rightly,  of  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  a  member  of  the  company, 
bought  at  the  sale  of  his  library  by  Doctor  Byrd,  of  Westover, 
and  sold  with  that  library  to  Isaac  Zane.  These  volumes  hap- 
pened at  the  time  of  the  sale,  to  have  been  borrowed  by  Colonel 
R.  Bland,  whose  library  I  bought,  and  with  this,  they  were  sent 
to  me.  I  gave  notice  of  it  to  Mr.  Zane,  but  he  never  reclaimed 
them.  I  shall  deposit  them  in  the  library  of  the  university, 
where  they  will  be  most  likely  to  be  preserved  with  care.  The 
other  four  volumes,  I  am  confident,  are  the  original  office  records 
3f  the  council.  My  conjectures  are  that  when  Sr.  John  Ran- 
dolph was  about  to  begin  the  History  of  Virginia  which  he  meant 
to  write,  he  borrowed  these  volumes  from  the  council  office,  to 
collect  from  them  materials  for  his  work.  He  died  before  he 
had  made  any  progress  in  that  work,  and  they  remained  in  his 
library,  probably  unobserved,  during  the  whole  life  of  the  late 
Peyton  Randolph,  his  son ;  from  his  executors  I  purchased  his 
library  in  a  lump,  and  these  volumes  were  sent  to  me  as  a  part 
of  it.  I  found  the  leaves  so  rotten  as  often  to  crumble  into  dust 
on  being  handled  ;  I  bound  them,  therefore,  together,  that  they 
might  not  be  unnecessarily  opened,  and  have  thus  preserved  them 
forty-seven  years.  If  my  conjectures  are  right,  they  must  have 
been  out  of  the  public  office  about  eighty  years.  I  shall  deposit 
them  also  with  the  others  in  the  same  library  of  the  university, 
where  they  will  be  safer  from  injury  than  in  a  public  office.  I 
have  promised,  however,  to  trust  them  to  Mr.  Hennig,  if  he  will 
'  copy  and  publish  them  when  he  shall  h?ve  finished  his  collec- 
tion of  the  laws.  For  this  he  is  peculiarly  qualified,  as  well  by 
his  diligence  as  by  his  familiarity  with  our  ancient  manuscript 


CORRESPONDENCE.  313 

characters,  a  familiarity  very  necessary  for  decyphering  these 
volumes. 

I  agree  with  you  that  it  is  the  duty  of  every  good  citizen  to 
use  all  the  opportunities  which  occur  to  him,  for  preserving  doc- 
uments relating  to  the  history  of  our  country.  That  I  have  not 
been  remiss  in  this  while  I  had  youth,  health,  and  opportunity, 
is  proved  otherwise,  as  well  as  by  the  materials  I  furnished  to- 
wards Mr.  Hening's  invaluable  collection  of  the  laws  of  our  coun- 
try ;  but  there  is  a  time,  and  that  time  is  come  with  me,  when 
these  duties  are  no  more,  when  age  and  the  wane  of  mind  and 
memory,  and  the  feebleness  of  the  powers  of  life  pass  them  over 
as  a  legacy  to  younger  hands.  I  write  now  slowly,  laboriously, 
painfully.  I  am  obliged,  therefore,  to  decline  all  correspondence 
which  some  moral  duty  does  not  urgently  call  on  me  to  answer. 
•I  always  trust  that  those  who  write  them  will  read  their  answer 
in  my  age  and  silence,  and  see  in  these  a  manifestation  that  I  am 
done  with' writing  letters.  I  am  sorry,  therefore,  that  I  am  not 
able  to  give  any  aid  to  the  work  you  contemplate,  other  than  my 
best  wishes  for  its  success,  and  to  these  I  add  the  assurance  of 
of  my  great  respect. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTicELLo,  October  12,  1823. 

Dear  Sir, — I  do  not  write  with  the  ease  which  your  letter  of 
September  the  18th  supposes.  Crippled  wrists  and  fingers  make 
writing  slow  and  laborious.  But  while  writing  to  you,  I  lose 
the  sense  of  these  things  in  the  recollection  of  ancient  times, 
when  youth  and  health  made  happiness  out  of  everything.  I 
forget  for  a  while  the  hoary  winter  of  age,  when  we  can  think 
of  nothing  but  how  to  keep  ourselves  warm,  and  how  to  get  rid 
of  our  heavy  hours  until  the  friendly  hand  of  death  shall  rid  us 
of  all  at  once.  Against  this  tedium  vitm,  however,  I  am  fortu- 
nately mounted  on  a  hobby,  which,  indeed,  I  should  have  better 
managed  some  thirty  or  forty  years  ago  j  but  whose  easy  amble 


314  lEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

is  still  sufficient  to  give  exercise  and  amusement  to  an  octogeuary 
rider.  This  is  the  establishment  of  a  University,  on  a  scale  more 
comprehensive,  and  in  a  country  more  healthy  and  central  than 
our  old  William  and  Mary,  which  these  obstacles  have  long  kept 
in  a  state  of  languor  and  inefficiency.  But  the  tardiness  with 
with  such  works  proceed,  may  render  it  doubtful  whether  I  shall 
live  to  see  it  go  into  action. 

Putting  aside  these  things,  however,  for  the  present,  I  write 
this  letter  as  due  to  a  friendship  coeval  with  our  government, 
and  now  attempted  to  be  poisoned,  when  too  late  in  life  to  be 
replaced  by  new  affections.  I  had  for  sometime  observed  in  the 
public  papers,  dark  hints  and  mysterious  inuendoes  of  a  coiTes- 
pondence  of  yours  with  a  friend,  to  whom  you  had  opened  your 
bosom  without  reserve,  and  which  was  to  be  made  public  by 
that  friend  or  his  representative.  And  now  it  is  said  to  be  ac- 
tually published.  It  has  not  yet  reached  us,  but  extracts  have 
been  given,  and  such  as  seemed  most  likely  to  draw  a  curtain  of 
separation  between  you  and  myself.  Were  there  no  other  motive 
than  that  of  indignation  against  the  author  of  this  outrage  on 
private  confidence,  whose  shaft  seems  to  have  been  aimed  at 
yourself  more  particularly,  this  would  make  it  the  duty  of  every 
honorable  mind  to  disappoint  that  aim,  by  opposing  to  its  im- 
pression a  seven-fold  shield  of  apathy  and  insensibility.  With 
me,  however,  no  such  armor  is  needed.  Tiie  circumstances  of 
the  times  in  which  we  have  happened  to  live,  and  the  partiality 
of  our  friends  at  a  particular  period,  placed  us  in  a  state  of  ap- 
parent opposition,  which  some  might  suppose  to  be  personal  > 
also  ;  and  there  might  not  be  wanting  those  who  wished  to  make 
it  so,  by  filling  our  ears  with  malignant  falsehoods,  by  dressing 
up  hideous  phantoms  of  their  own  creation,  presenting  them  to 
you  under  my  name,  to  me  under  yours,  and  endeavoring  to  in- 
stil into  our  minds  things  concerning  each  other  the  most  desti- 
tute of  truth.  And  if  there  had  been,  at  any  time,  a  moment 
Tvhen  we  were  off  olir  guard,  and  in  a  temper  to  let  the  whispers 
of  these  people  make  us  forget  what  we  had  known  of  each 
other  for  so  many  years,  and  years  of  so  much  trial,  yet  all  men 


COEEESPONDENCE.  315 

who  have  attended  to  the  workings  of  the  human  mind,  who 
have  seen  the  false  colors  under  which  passion  sometimes  dresses 
the  actions  and  motives  of  others,  have  seen  also  those  passions 
subsiding  with  time  and  reflection,  dissipating  like  mists  before 
the  rising  sun,  and  restoring  to  us  the  sight  of  all  things  in  their 
true  shape  and  colors.  It  would  be  strange  indeed,  if,  at  our 
years,  we  were  to  go  baqk  an  age  to  hunt  up  imaginary  or  for- 
gotten facts,  to  disturb  the  repose  of  affections  so  sweetening  to 
the  evening  of  our  lives.  Be  assured,  my  dear  Sir,  that  I  am 
incapable  of  receiving  the  slightest  impression  from  the  efibrt 
now  made  to  plant  thorns  on  the  pillow  of  age,  worth  and  wis- 
dom, and  to  sow  tares  between  friends  who  have  been  such  for 
near  half  a  century.  Beseeching  you  then,  not  to  suffer  your 
mind  to  be  disquieted  by  this  wicked  attempt  to  poison  its  peace, 
and  praying  you  to  throw  it  by  among  the  things  which  have 
never  happened,  I  add  sincere  assurances  of  my  unabated  and 
constant  attachment,  friendship  and  respect. 


TO    THE    PRESIDENT. 

JIi.xTiCKLLO,  October  24,  1823. 

Deak  Sir, — The  question  presented  by  the  letters  you  have 
sent  me,  is  the  most  momentous  which  has  ever  been  ofi'ered  to 
my  contemplation  since  that  of  Independence.  That  made  us  a 
nation,  this  sets  our  compass  and  points  the  course  which  we  are 
to  steer  through  the  ocean  of  time  opening  on  us.  And  never 
could  we  embark  on  it  under  circumstances  more  auspicious. 
Our  first  and  fundamental  maxim  should  be,  never  to  entangle 
ourselves  in  the  broils  of  Europe.  Our  second,  never  to  sulfer 
Europe  to  intermeddle  with  cis-Atlantic  affairs.  America,  North 
and  South,  has  a  set  of  interests  distinct  from  those  of  Eui-ope, 
and  peculiarly  her  own.  She  should  therefore  have  a  system  of 
her  own,  separate  and  apart  from  that  of  Europe.  Wliile  the  last 
is  laboring  to  become  the  domicil  of  despotism,  our  endeavor 
should  surely  be,  to  make  our  hemisphere  that  of  freedom.     One 


316  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

nation,  most  of  all,  could  disturb  us  in  this  pursuit ;  she  now 
offers  to  lead,  aid,  and  accompany  us  in  it.  By  acceding  to  her 
proposition,  we  detach  her  from  the  bands,  bring  her  mighty 
weight  into  the  scale  of  free  government,  and  emancipate  a  coe- 
tinent  at  one  stroke,  which  might  otherwise  linger  long  in  doubt 
and  difficulty.  Great  Britain  is  the  nation  which  can  do  us  the 
most  harm  of  any  one,  or  all  on  earth  ;  and  with  her  on  our  side 
we  need  not  fear  the  whole  world.  With  her  then,  we  should 
most  sedulously  cherish  a  cordial  friendship  ;  and  nothing  would 
tend  more  to  knit  our  affections  than  to  be  fighting  once  more, 
side  by  side,  in  the  same  cause.  Not  that  I  would  purchase  even 
her  amity  at  the  price  of  taking  part  in  her  wars.  But  the  war 
in  which  the  present  proposition  might  engage  us,  should  that 
be  its  consequence,  is  not  her  war,  but  ours.  Its  object  is  to  in- 
troduce and  establish  the  American  system,  of  keeping  out  of 
our  land  all  foreign  powers,  of  never  permitting  those  of  Europe 
to  intermeddle  with  the  affairs  of  our  nations.  It  is  to  maintain 
our  own  principle,  not  to  depart  from  it.  And  if,  to  facilitate 
this,  we  can  effect  a  division  in  the  body  of  the  European  powers, 
and  draw  over  to  our  side  its  most  powerful  member,  surely  we 
should  do  it.  But  I  am  clearly  of  Mr.  Canning's  opinion,  that 
it  will  prevent  instead  of  provoking  war.  With  Great  Britain 
withdrawn  from  their  scale  and  shifted  into  that  of  our  two  con- 
tinents, all  Europe  combined  would  not  undertake  such  a  war. 
For  how  would  they  propose  to  get  at  either  enemy  without  su- 
perior fleets  ?  Nor  is  the  occasion  to  be  slighted  which  this 
proposition  offers,  of  declaring  our  protest  against  the  atrocious 
violations  of  the  rights  of  nations,  by  the  interference  of  any  one 
in  the  internal  affairs  of  another,  so  flagitiously  begun  by  Bona- 
parte, and  now  continued  by  the  equally  lawless  Alliance,  calling 
itself  Holy. 

But  we  have  first  to  ask  ourselves  a  question.  Do  we  wish  to 
acquire  to  our  own  confederacy  any  one  or  more  of  the  Spanish 
provinces  ?  I  candidly  confess,  that  I  have  ever  looked  on  Cuba 
as  the  most  interesting  addition  which  could  ever  be  made  to  our 
system  of  States.     The  control  which,  with  Florida  Point,  this 


CORRESPONDENOE,  SI7 

island  would  give  us  over  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  the  countries 
and  isthmus  bordering  on  it,  as  well  as  all  those  whose  waters 
flow  into  it,  would  fill  up  the  measure  of  our  political  well-being. 
Yet,  as  I  am  sensible  that  this  can  never  be  obtained,  even  with 
her  own  consent,  but  by  war  ;  and  its  independence,  which  is  our 
second  interest,  (and  especially  its  independence  of  England,)  can 
be  secured  without  it,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  abandoning  my  first 
wish  to  future  chances,  and  accepting  its  independence,  with 
peace  and  the  friendship  of  England,  rather  than  its  association, 
at  the  expense  of  war  and  her  enmity. 

I  could  honestly,  therefore,  join  in  the  declaration  proposed, 
that  we  aim  not  at  the  acquisition  of  any  of  those  possessions, 
that  we  will  not  stand  in  the  way  of  any  amicable  arrangement 
between  them  and  the  mother  country ;  but  that  we  will  oppose, 
with  all  our  means,  the  forcible  interposition  of  any  other  power, 
as  auxiliary,  stipendiary,  or  under  any  other  form  or  pretext,  and 
most  especially,  their  transfer  to  any  power  by  conquest,  cession, 
or  acquisition  in  any  other  way.  I  should  think  it,  therefore, 
advisable,  that  the  Executive  should  encourage  the  British  gov- 
ernment to  a  continuance  in  the  dispositions  expressed  in  these 
letters,  by  an  assurance  of  his  concurrence  with  them  as  far  as  his 
authority  goes  ;  and  that  as  it  may  lead  to  war,  the  declaration  of 
which  requires  an  act  of  Congress,  the  case  shall  be  laid  before 
them  for  consideration  at  their  first  meeting,  and  under  the  rea- 
sonable aspect  in  which  it  is  seen  by  himself. 

I  have  been  so  long  weaned  from  political  subjects,  and  have 
so  long  ceased  to  take  any  interest  in  them,  that  I  am  sensible  I 
am  not  qualified  to  offer  opinions  on  them  worthy  of  any  atten- 
tion. But  the  question  now  proposed  involves  consequences  so 
lasting,  and  efiects  so  decisive  of  our  future  destinies,  as  to  re- 
kindle all  the  interest  I  have  heretofore  felt  on  such  occasions, 
and  to  induce  me  to  the  hazard  of  opinions,  which  will  prove 
only  my  wish  to  contribute  still  my  mite  towards  anything  which 
may  be  useful  to  our  country.  And  praying  you  to  accept  it  at 
only  what  it  is  worth,  I  add  the  assurance  of  my  constant  and 
affectionate  friendship  and  respect. 


318  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 


TO    M.    COR  AT. 

MoNTicELLO,  October  31,  1823. 

Dear  Sir, — ^Your  favor  of  July  10th  is  lately  received.  I  rec* 
ollect  with  pleasure  the  short  opportunity  of  acquaintance  with 
you  afforded  me  in  Paris,  by  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Paradise,  and 
the  fine  editions  <.if  the  classical  writers  of  Greece  which  have 
been  announced  by  you  from  time  to  time,  have  never  permitted 
me  to  lose  the  recollection.  Until  those  of  Aristotle's  Ethics,  and 
the  Strategicos  of  Onesander,  with  which  you  have  now  favored 
me,  and  for  which  I  pray  you  to  accept  my  thanks,  I  had  seen 
only  your  Lives  of  Plutarch.  These  I  had  read,  and  profited 
much  by  your  valuable  Scholia,  and  the  aid  of  a  few  words  from 
a  modern  Greek  dictionary  would,  I  believe,  have  enabled  me  to 
read  your  patriotic  addresses  to  your  countrymen. 

You  have  certainly  begun  at  the  right  end  towards  preparing 
them  for  the  great  object  they  are  now  contending  for,  by  im- 
proving their  minds  and  qualifying  them  for  self-government. 
For  this  they  will  owe  you  lasting  honors.  Nothing  is  more 
likely  to  forward  this  object  than  a  study  of  the  fine  models  of 
science  left  by  their  ancestors,  to  whom  we  also  are  all  indebted 
for  the  lights  which  originally  led  ourselves  out  of  Gothic  dark- 
ness, 

No  people  sympathize  more  feelingly  than  ours  with  the  suffer- 
ings of  your  countrymen,  none  offer  more  sincere  and  ardent 
prayers  to  heaven  for  their  success.  And  nothing  indeed  but  the 
fundamental  principle  of  our  government,  never  to  entangle  us 
with  the  broils  of  Europe,  could  restrain  our  generous  youth  from 
taking  some  part  in  this  holy  cause.  Possessing  ourselves  the 
combined  blessing  of  liberty  and  order,  we  wish  the  same  to 
other  countries,  and  to  none  more  than  yours,  which,  the  first  of 
civilized  nations,  presented  examples  of  what  man  should  be. 
Not,  indeed,  that  the  forms  of  government  adapted  to  their  age 
and  country  are  practicable  or  to  be  imitated  in  our  day,  although 
prejudices  in  their  favor  would  be  natural  enough  to  your  people. 
The  circumstances  of  the  world  are  too  much  changed  for  that. 


OORRESP  JNDENOE.  319 

The  government  of  Athens,  for  example,  was  that  of  the  people 
of  one  city  making  laws  for  the  whole  country  subjected  to 
them.  That  of  Lacedaemon  was  the  rule  of  military  monks 
over  the  laboring  class  of  the  people,  reduced  to  abject  slavery. 
These  are  not  the  doctrines  of  the  present  age.  The  equal  rights 
of  man,  and  the  happiness  of  every  individual,  are  now  acknowl- 
edged to  be  the  only  legitimate  objects  of  government.  Modern 
times  have  the  signal  advantage,  too,  of  having  discovered  the 
only  device  by  which  these  rights  can  be  secured,  to-wit :  gov- 
ernment by  the  people,  acting  not  in  person,  but  by  representa- 
tives chosen  by  themselves,  that  is  to  say,  by  every  man  of  ripe 
years  and  sane  mind,  who  either  contributes  by  his  purse  or  per- 
son to  the  support  of  his  country.  The  small  and  imperfect  mix- 
ture of  representative  government  in  England,  impeded  as  it  is  by 
other  branches,  aristocratical  and  hereditary,  shows  yet  the  power 
of  the  representative  principle  towards  improving  the  condition 
of  man.  With  us,  all  the  branches  of  the  government  are  elective 
by'  the  people  themselves,  except  the  Judiciary,  of  whose  science 
and  qualifications  they  are  not  competent  judges.  Yet,  even  in 
that  department,  we  call  in  a  jury  of  the  people  to  decide  all  con- 
troverted matters  of  fact,  because  to  that  investigation  they  are 
entirely  competent,  leaving  thus  as  little  as  possible,  merely  the 
law  of  the  case,  to  the  decision  of  the  judges.  And  true  it  is 
that  the  people,  especially  when  moderately  instructed,  are  the 
only  safe,  because  the  only  honest,  depositories  of  the  public 
rights,  and  should  therefore  be  introduced  into  the  administra- 
tion of  them  in  every  function  to  which  they  are  sufiicient ;  they 
will  err  sometimes  and  accidentally,  but  never  designedly,  and 
with  a  systematic  and  persevering  purpose  of  overthrowing  the 
free  principles  of  the  government.  Hereditary  bodies,  on  the 
contrary,  always  existing,  always  on  the  watch  for  their  own 
aggrandizement,  profit  of  every  opportunity  of  advancing  the 
privileges  of  their  order,  and  encroaching  on  the  rights  of  the 
people. 

The  public  papers  tell  us  that  your  nation  has  established  a 
government  of  some  kind  without  informing  us  what  it  is.     This 


320  JEFFEESOK'S    WORKS. 

is  certainly  necessary  for  the  direction  of  the  war,  but  I  presume 
it  is  intended  to  be  temporary  only,  as  a  permanent  constitution 
must  be  the  work  of  quiet,  leisure,  much  inquiry,  and  great  de- 
liberation. The  extent  of  our  country  was  so  great,  and  its 
former  division  into  distinct  States  so  established,  that  ive  thought 
it  better  to  confederate  as  to  foreign  affairs  only.  Every  State 
retained  its  self-government  in  domestic  matters,  as  better  quali- 
fied to  direct  them  to  the  good  and  satisfaction  of  their  citizens, 
than  a  general  government -so  distant  from  its  remoter  citizens, 
and  so  little  familiar  with  the  local  peculiarities  of  the  different 
parts.  But  I  presume  that  the  extent  of  country  with  you,  which 
may  liberate  itself  from  the  Turks,  is  not  too  large  to  be  asso- 
ciated under  a  single  government,  and  that  the  particular  consti- 
tutions of  our  several  States,  therefore,  and  not  that  of  our  federal 
government,  will  furnish  the  basis  best  adapted  to  your  situation. 
There  are  now  twenty-four  of  these  distinct  States,  none  smaller 
perhaps  than  your  Morea,  several  larger  than  all  Greece.  Each 
of  these  has  a  constitution  framed  by  itself  and  for  itself,  but  mil- 
itating in  nothing  with  the  powers  of  the  general  government  in 
its  appropriate  department  of  war  and  foreign  affairs.  These 
constitutions  being  in  print  and  in  every  hand,  I  shall  only  make 
brief  observations  on  them,  and  on  those  provisions  particularly 
which  have  not  fulfilled  expectations,  or  which,  being  varied  in 
different  States,  leave  a  choice  to  be  made  of  that  which  is  best. 
You  will  find  much  good  in  all  of  them,  and  no  one  which 
would  be  approved  in  all  its  parts.  Such  indeed  are  the  differ- 
ent circumstances,  prejudices,  and  habits  of  different  nations,  that 
the  constitution  of  no  one  would  be  reconcilable  to  any  other  in 
every  point.  A  judicious  selection  of  the  parts  of  each  suitable 
to  any  other,  is  all  which  prudence  should  attempt ;  thi-s«will  ap- 
pear from  a  review  of  some  parts  of  our  constitutions. 

Our  executives  are  elected  by  the  people  for  terms  of  one,  two, 
three,  or  four  years,  under  the  names  of  governors  or  presidents, 
and  are  reeligible  a  second  time,  or  after  a  certain  term,  if  ap- 
proved by  the  people.  May  your  Ethnarch  be  elective  also  ?  or 
does  your  position  among  the  warrnig  powers  of  Europe  need  an 


CORRESPONDENCE.  321 

office  more  permanent,  and  a  leader  more  stable  ?  Sureljr  yon 
will  make  him  single.  For  if  experience  has  ever  taught  a  truth, 
it  is  that  a  plurality  in  the  supreme  executive  will  forever  split 
into  discordant  factions,  distract  the  nation,  annihilate  its  ener- 
gies, and  force  the  nation  to  rally  under  a  single  head,  generally 
an  usurper.  We  have,  I  think,  fallen  on  the  happiest  of  all 
modes  of  constituting  the  executive,  that  of  easing  and  aiding 
our  President,  by  permitting  him  to  choose  Secretaries  of  State, 
of  finance,  of  war,  and  of  the  navy,  with  whom  he  may  advise, 
either  separately  or  all  together,  and  remedy  their  divisions  by 
adopting  or  controling  their  opinions  at  his  discretion  ;  this  saves 
the  nation  from  the  evils  of  a  divided  will,  and  secures  to  it  a 
steady  march  in  the  systematic  course  which  the  president  may 
have  adopted  for  that  of  his  administration. 

Our  legislatures  are  composed  of  two  houses,  the  senate  and 
representatives,  elected  in  different  modes,  and  for  different  pe- 
riods, and  in  some  States,  with  a  qualified  veto  in  the  executive 
chief.  But  to  avoid  all  temptation  to  superior  pretensions  of  the 
one  over  the  other  house,  and  the  possibility  of  either  erecting 
itself  into  a  privileged  order,  might  it  not  be  better  to  choose  at 
the  same  time  and  in  the  same  mode,  a  body  sufficiently  numer- 
ous to  be  divided  by  lot  into  two  separate  houses,  acting  as  inde- 
pendently as  the  two  houses  in  England,  or  in  our  governments, 
and  to  shuffle  their  names  together  and  re-distribute  them  by  lot, 
once  a  week  for  a  fortnight  ?  This  would  equally  give  the 
benefit  of  time  and  separate  deliberation,  guard  against  an  abso- 
lute passage  by  acclamation,  derange  cabals,  intrigues,  and  the 
count  of  noses,  disarm  the  ascendency  which  a  popular  dem- 
agogue might  at  anytime  obtain  over  either  house,  and  render 
impossil)le  all  disputes  between  the  two  houses,  which  often  foim 
such  obstacles  to  business. 

Our  different  States  have  differently  modified  their  several  ju- 
diciaries as  to  the  tenure  of  office.  Some  appoint  their  judges 
for  a  given  term  of  time  ;  some  continue  them  during  good  be- 
havior, and  that  to  be  determined  on  by  the  concurring  vote  of 
two-thirds  of  each  legislative  house.     In  England  they  are  re- 

VOL.  VII.  21 


322  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

movable  by  a  majority  only  of  each  house.  The  last  is  a  prac- 
ticable remedy ;  the  second  is  not.  The  combination  of  the 
friends  and  associates  of  the  accused,  the  action  of  personal  and 
party  passions,  and  the  sympathies  of  the  human  heart,  will  for- 
ever find  means  of  influencing  one-third  of  either  the  one  or  ihe 
other  house,  will  thus  secure  their  impunity,  and  establish  them 
in  fact  for  life.  The  first  remedy  is  the  best,  that  of  appointing 
for  a  term  of  years  only,  with  a  capacity  of  re-appointment  if 
their  conduct  has  been  approved.  At  the  establishment  of  our 
constitutions,  the  judiciary  bodies  were  supposed  to  be  the  most 
helpless  and  harmless  members  of  the  government.  Experience, 
however,  soon  showed  in  what  way  they  were  to  become  the 
most  dangerous  ;  that  the  insufiiciency  of  the  means  provided  for 
their  removal  gave  them  a  freehold  and  irresponsibility  in  office  ; 
that  their  decisions,  seeming  to  concern  individual  suitors  only, 
pass  silent  and  unheeded  by  the  public  at  large  ;  that  these  de- 
cisions, nevertheless,  become  law  by  precedent,  sapping,  by  little 
and  little,  the  foundations  of  the  constitution,  and  working  its 
change  by  construction,  before  any  one  has  perceived  that  that 
invisible  and  helpless  worm  has  been  busily  employed  in  con- 
suming its  substance.  In  truth,  man  is  not  made  to  be  trusted 
for  life,  if  secured  against  all  liability  to  account. 

The  constitutions  of  some  of  our  States  have  made  it  a  duty 
■  of  their  government  to  provide  with  due  care  for  the  public  edu- 
cation. This  we  divide  into  three  grades.  1.  Primary  schools, 
in  which  are  taught  reading,  writing,  and  common  arithmetic,  to 
every  infant  of  the  State,  male  and  female.  2.  Intermediate 
schools,  in  which  an  education  is  given  proper  for  artificers  and 
the  middle  vocations  of  life ;  in  grammar,  for  example,  general 
history,  logarithms,  arithmetic,  plain  trigonometry,  mensuration, 
the  use  of  the  globes,  navigation,  the  mechanical  principles,  the 
elements  of  natural  philosophy,  and,  as  a  preparation  for  the  Uni- 
versity, the  Greek  and  Latin  languages.  3.  An  University,  in 
which  these  and  all  other  useful  sciences  shall  be  taught  in  their 
highest  degree ;  the  expenses  of  these  institutions  are  defrayed 
partly  by  the  public,  and  partly  by  the  individuals  profiting  of  them 


OOERESPOFDENOE.  323 

But,  whatever  be  the  constitution,  great  care  must  be  taken  to 
provide  a  mode  of  amendment,  Avhen  experience  or  change  of 
circumstances  shall  have  manifested  that  any  part  of  it  is  una- 
adapted  to  the  good  of  the  nation.  In  some  of  our  States  it  re- 
quii'es  a  new  authority  from  the  whole  people,  acting  by  their 
representatives,  chosen  for  this  express  purpose,  and  assembled 
in  convention.  This  is  found  too  difficult  for  remedying  the  im- 
perfections which  experience  develops  from  time  to  time  in  an 
organization  of  the  first  impression.  A  greater  facility  of  amend- 
ment is  certainly  requisite  to  maintain  it  in  a  course  of  action  ac- 
commodated to  the  times  and  changes  through  which  we  are 
ever  passing.  In  England  the  constitution  may  be  altered  by  a 
single  act  of  the  legislature,  which  amounts  to  the  having  no 
constitution  at  all.  In  some  of  our  States,  an  act  passed  by  two 
different  legislatures,  chosen  by  the  people,  at  different  and  suc- 
cessive elections,  is  sufficient  to  make  a  change  in  the  constitu- 
tion. As  this  mode  may  be  rendered  more  or  less  easy,  by  re- 
quiring the  approbation  of  fewer  or  more  successive  legislatures, 
according  to  the  degree  of  difficulty  thought  sufficient,  and  yet 
safe,  it  is  evidently  the  best  principle  which  can  be  adopted  for 
constitutional  amendments. 

I  have  stated  that  the  constitutions  of  our  several  States  vary 
more  or  less  in  some  particulars.  But  there  are  certain  principles 
in  which  all  agree,  and  which  all  cherish  as  vitally  essential  to 
the  protection  of  the  life,  liberty,  property,  and  safety  of  the 
citizen. 

1.  Freedom  of  religion,  restricted  only  from  acts  of  trespass  on 
that  of  others. 

2.  Freedom  of  person,  s.icuring  every  one  from  imprisonment, 
or  other  bodily  restraint,  but  by  the  laws  of  the  land.  This  is 
effected  by  the  well-known  law  of  habeas  corpus. 

3.  Trial  by  jury,  the  best  of  all  safe-guards  for  the  person,  the 
property,  and  the  fame  of  every  individual. 

4.  The  exclusive  right  of  legislation  and  taxation  in  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  people. 

5.  Freedom  of  the  press,  subject  only  to  liability  for  personal 


324  JEyFERSON'S    WOEK.S. 

injuries.  This  formidable  censor  of  the  public  functionaries,  by 
arraigning  them  at  the  tribunal  of  public  opinion,  produces  reform 
peaceably,  which  must  otherwise  be  done  by  revolution.  It  is 
also  the  best  instrument  for  enlightening  the  mind  of  man,  and 
improving  him  as  a  rational,  moral,  and  social  being.  , 

I  have  thus,  dear  Sir,  according  to  your  request,  given  you 
some  thoughts  on  the  subject  of  national  government.  They  are 
the  result  of  the  observations  and  reflections  of  an  octogenary, 
who  has  passed  fifty  years  of  trial  and  trouble  in  the  various 
grades  of  his  country's  service.  They  are  yet  but  outlines  which 
you  will  better  fill  up,  and  accommodate  to  the  habits  and  cir- 
cumstances of  your  countrymen.  Should  they  furnish  a  single 
idea  which  may  be  useful  to  them,  I  shall  fancy  it  a  tribute  renr 
dered  to  the  manes  of  your  Homer,  your  Demosthenes,  and  the 
splendid  constellation  of  sages  and  heroes,  whose  blood  is  still 
flowing  in  your  viens,  and  whose  merits  are  still  resting,  as  a 
heavy  debt,  on  the  shoulders  of  the  living,  and  the  future  races 
of  men.  While  we  off"er  to  heaven  the  warmest  supplications 
for  the  restoration  of  your  countrymen  to  the  freedom  and  science 
of  their  ancestors,  permit  me  to  assure  yourself  of  the  cordial  es- 
teem and  high  respect  which  I  bear  and  cherish  towards  your- 
self personally. 


TO    THE    MARQUIS    DE    LA    FAYETTE. 

MoNTicisLLO,  November  4,  1823. 

Mt  Dear  Friend, — Two  dislocated  wrists  and  crippled  fingers 
have  rendered  writing  so  slow  and  kborious,  as  to  oblige  me  to 
withdraw  from  nearly  all  correspondence ;  not  however,  from 
yours,  while  I  can  make  a  stroke  with  a  pen.  We  have  gone 
through  too  many  trying  scenes  together,  to  forget  the  sympa- 
thies  and  afiections  they  nourished. 

Your-  trials  have  indeed  been  long  and  severe.  When  they 
will  end,  is  yet  unknown,  but  where  they  will  end,  cannot  be 
doubted.     Alliances,  Holy  or  Hellish,  may  be  formed,  and  retard 


COREESPONDENCE.  325 

the  epoch  of  deliverance,  may  swell  the  rivers  of  blood  which 
are  yet  to  flow,  but  their  own  will  close  the  scene,  and  leave  to 
mankind  the  right  of  self-government.  I  trust  that  Spain  will 
prove,  that  a  nation  cannot  be  conquered  which  determines  not 
to  be  so,  and  that  her  success  will  be  the  turning  of  the  tide  of 
liberty,  no  more  to  be  arrested  by  human  efforts.  Whether  the 
state  of  society  in  Europe  can  bear  a  republican  government,  I 
doubted,  you  know,  when  with  you,  and  I  do  now.  A  heredi- 
tary chief,  strictly  limited,  the  right  of  war  vested  in  the  legisla- 
tive body,  a  rigid  economy  of  the  public  contributions,  and  abso- 
lute interdiction  of  all  useless  expenses,  will  go  far  towards  keep- 
ing the  government  honest  and  unoppressive.  But  the  only  se- 
curity of  all,  is  in  a  free  press.  The  force  of  public  opinion  can- 
not be  resisted,  when  permitted  freely  to  be  expressed.  The 
agitation  it  produces  must  be  submitted  to.  It  is  necessary,  to 
keep  the  waters  pure. 

We  are  all,  for  example,  in  agitation  even  in  our  peaceful 
country.  For  in  peace  as  well  as  in  war,  the  mind  must  be  kept 
in  motion.  Who  is  to  be  the  next  President,  is  the  topic  here 
of  every  conversation.  My  opinion  on  that  subject  is  what  I  ex- 
pressed to  you  in  my  last  letter.  The  question  will  be  ultimate- 
ly reduced  to  the  northernmost  and  southernmost  candidate. 
The  former  will  get  every  federal  vote  in  the  Union,  and  many 
republicans ;  the  latter,  all  of  those  denominated  of  the  old  school ; 
for  you  are  not  to  believe  that  these  two  parties  are  amalgamat- 
ed, that  the  lion  and  the  lamb  are  lying  down  together.  The 
Hartford  Convention,  the  victory  of  Orleans,  the  peace  of  Ghent, 
prostrated  the  name  of  federalism.  Its  votaries  abandoned  it 
through  shame  and  mortification ;  and  now  call  themselves  re- 
republicans.  But  the  name  alone  is  changed,  the  principles  are 
the  same.  For  in  truth,  the  parties  of  Whig  and  Tory,  are  those 
of  nature.  They  exist  in  all  countries,  whether  called  by  these 
namds,  or  by  tliose  of  Aristocrats  and  Democrats,  Cote  Droite  and 
Cote  Gauche,  Ultras  and  Radicals,  Serviles,  and  Liberals.  The 
sickly,  weakly,  timid  man,  fears  the  people,  and  is  a  tory  by  na- 
ture.    The  healthy,  strong  and   bold,  cherishes   them,  and  is 


82(5  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

formed  a  whig  by  nature.  On  the  ecKpse  of  federalism  with  us, 
although  not  its  extinction,  its  leaders  got  up  the  Missouri  ques- 
tion, under  the  false  front  of  lessening  the  measure  of  slavery, 
but  with  the  real  view  of  producing  a  geographical  division  of 
parties,  which  might  insure  them  the  next  President.  The  peo- 
jile  of  the  north  went  blindfold  into  the  snare,  followed  their 
leaders  for  awhile  with  a  zeal  truly  moral  and  laudable,  until 
they  became  sensible  that  they  were  injuring  instead  of  aiding 
the  real  interests  of  the  slaves,  that  they  had  been  used  merely 
as  tools  for  electioneering  purposes ;  and  that  tric'k  of  hypocrisy 
then  fell  as  quickly  as  it  had  been  got  up.  To  that  is  now  suc- 
ceeding a  distinction,  which,  like  that  of  republican  and  federal, 
or  whig  and  tory,  being  equally  intermixed  through  every  State, 
threatens  none  of  those  geographical  schisms  which  go  immedi- 
ately to  a  separation.  The  line  of  division  now,  is  the  preserva- 
tion of  State  rights  as  reserved  in  the  constitution,  or  by  strained 
constructions  of  that  instrument,  to  merge  all  into  a  consolidated 
government.  The  tories  are  for  strengthening  the  executive  and 
general  Government ;  the  whigs  cherish  the  representative  branch, 
and  the  rights  reserved  by  the  States,  as  the  bulwark  against 
consolidation,  which  must  immediately  generate  monarchy.  And 
although  this  division  excites,  as  yet,  no  warmth,  yet  it  exists,  is 
well  understood,  and  will  be  a  principle  of  voting  at  the  ensuing 
election,  with  the  reflecting  men  of  both  parties. 

I  thank  you  much  for  the  two  books  you  were  so  kind  as  to 
send  me  by  Mr.  Gallatin.  Miss  Wright  had  before  favored  me 
with  the  first  edition  of  her  American  work  ;  but  her  "  Few  days 
in  Athens,"  was  entirely  new,  and  has  been  a  treat  to  me  of  the 
highest  order.  The  matter  and  manner  of  the  dialogue  is  strict- 
ly ancient ;  and  the  principles  of  the  sects  are  beautifully  and 
candidly  explained  and  contrasted ;  and  the  scenery  and  portrait- 
ure of  the  interlocutors  are  of  higher  finish  than  anything  in  that 
line  left  us  by  the  ancients ;  and  like  Ossian,  if  not  ancient,  it  is 
equal  to  the  best  morsels  of  antiquity.  I  augur,  from  this  in- 
stancej  that  Herculaneum  is  likely  to  furnish  better  specimens 


CORRESPONDENCE.  327 

of  modern  than  of  ancient  genius ;  and  may  we  not  hope  more 
from  the  same  pen  ? 

After  much  sickness,  and  the  accident  of  a  broken  and  disa- 
bled arm,  I  am  again  in  tolerable  health,  but  extremely  debiUtat- 
ed,  so  as  to  be  scarcely  able  to  walk  into  my  garden.  The  hebe- 
tude of  age,  too,  and  extinguishment  of  interest  in  the  things 
around  me,  are  weaning  me  from  them,  and  dispose  me  with 
cheerfulness  to  resign  them  to  the  existing  generation,  satisfied 
that  the  daily  advance  of  science  will  enable  them  to  administer 
the  commonwealth  with  increased  wisdom.  You  have  still  many 
valuable  years  to  give  to  your  country,  and  with  my  prayers  that 
they  may  be  years  of  health  and  happiness,  and  especially  that 
they  may  see  the  establishment  of  the  principles  of  government 
which  you  have  cherished  through  life,  accept  the  assurance  of 
my  affectionate  and  constant  friendship  and  respect. 


TO    MK.    PATRICK    K.    RODGEBS. 

MoNTiCELLO,  January  29,  1824. 

Sir, — I  have  duly  received  your  favor  of  the  14th,  with  a  copy 
of  your  mathematical  principles  of  natural  philosophy,  which  I 
have  looked  into  with  all  the  attention  which  the  rust  of  age  and 
long  continued  avocations  of  a  very  different  character  permit  me 
to  exercise.  I  think  them  entirely  worthy  of  approbation,  both 
as  to  matter  and  method,  and  for  their  brevity  as  a  text  book  ; 
and  I  remark  particularly  the  clearness  and  precision  with  which 
the  propositions  are  enounced,  and,  in  the  demonstrations,  the 
easy  form  in  which  ideas  are  presented  to  the  mind,  so  as  to  be 
almost  intuitive  and  self-evident.  Of  Cavallo's  book,  which  you 
say  you  are  enjoined  to  teach,  I  have  no  knowledge,  having 
never  seen  it ;  but  its  character  is,  I  think,  that  of  mere  mediocri- 
ty ;  and,  from  my  personal  acquaintance  with  the  man,  I  should 
expect  no  more.  He  was  heavy,  capable  enough  of  understand- 
ing what  he  read,  and  with  memory  to  retain  it,  but  without  the' 
talent  of  digestion  or  improvement.     But,  indeed,  the  EnghsK 


328  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

generally  have  been  very  stationary  in  latter  times,  and  the 
French,  on  the  contrary,  so  active  and  successful,  particularly  in 
preparing  elementary  books,  in  the  mathematical  and  natural 
sciences,  that  those  who  wish  for  instruction,  without  caring  from 
what  nation  they  get  it,  resort  universally  to  the  latter  language. 
Besides  the  earlier  and  invaluable  works  of  Euler  and  Bezont, 
we  have  latterly  that  of  Lacroix  in  mathematics,  of  Legendre  in 
geometry,  Lavoisier  in  chemistry,  the  elementary  works  of  Haiiy 
in  physics,  Biot  in  experimental  physics  and  physical  astronomy, 
Dumeril  in  natural  history,  to  say  nothing  of  many  detached  essays 
of  Monge  and  others,  and  the  transcendent  labors  of  Laplace,  and 
I  am  informed,  by  a  highly  instructed  person  recently  from  Cam- 
bridge, that  the  mathmeticians  of  that  institution,  sensible  of  be- 
ing in  the  rear  of  those  of  the  continent,  and  ascribing  the  cause 
much  to  their  too  long-continued  preference  of  the  geometrical 
over  the  analyitcal  methods,  which  the  French  have  so  much  cul- 
tivated and  improved,  have  now  adopted  the  latter;  and  that 
they  have  also  given  up  the  fluxionary,  for  the  differential  calcu- 
lus. To  confine  a  school,  therefore,  to  the  obsolete  work  of 
Cavallo,  is  to  shut  out  all  advances  in  the  physical  sciences, 
which  have  been  so  great  in  latter  times.  I  am  glad,  however, 
to  learn  from  your  work,  and  to  expect  from  those  it  promised  in 
succession,  which  will  doubtless  be  of  equal  grade,  that  so  good 
a  course  of  instruction  is  pursued  in  William  and  Mary.  It  is 
very  long  since  I  have  had  any  infermation  of  the  state  of  edu- 
cation in  that  seminary,  to  which,  as  my  alma  mater,  my  at- 
tachment has  been  ever  sincere,  although  not  exclusive.  When 
that  college  was  located  at  the  middle  plantation  in  1693,  Charles 
city  was  a  frontier  county,  and  there  were  no  inhabitants  above 
the  falls  of  the  rivers,  sixty  miles  only  higher  up.  It  was,  there- 
fore, a  position,  nearly  central  to  the  population,  as  it  then  was; 
but  when  the  frontier  became  extended  to  the  Sandy  river,  three 
hundred  miles  west  of  Williamsburg,  the  public  convenience 
called,  first  for  a  removal  of  the  seat  of  government,  and  latterly, 
not  for  a  removal  of  the  college,  but,  for  the  establishment  of  a 
new  one,  in  a  more  central  and  healthy  situation ;  not  disturbing 


OOREESPONDENOE,  329 

tlie  old  one  in  its  possessions  or  functions,  but  leaving  them  un- 
impaired for  the  benefit  of  those  to  whom  it  is  convenient.  And 
indeed,  I  do  not  foresee  that  the  number  of  its  students  is  likely 
to  be  much  affected  ;  because  I  presume  that,  at  present,  its  dis- 
tance and  autumnal  climate  prevent  its  receiving  many  students 
from  above  the  tide-waters,  and  especially  from  above  the  moun- 
tains. This  is,  therefore,  one  of  the  cases  where  the  lawyers  say 
there  is  damnum  absque  injuria  ;  and  they  instance,  as  in  point, 
the  settlement  of  a  new  schoolmaster  in  the  neighborhood  of  an 
old  one.  At  any  rate  it  is  one  of  those  cases  wherein  the  public 
interest  rightfully  prevails,  and  the  justice  of  which  will  be  yield- 
ed to  by  none,  I  am  sure,  with  more  dutiful  and  candid  acquies- 
cence than  the  enlightened  friends  of  our  ancient  and  venerable 
institution.  The  only  rivalship,  I  hope,  between  the  old  and  the 
new,  will  be  in  doing  the  most  good  possible  in  their  respective 
sections  of  country. 

As  the  diagrams  of  your  book  have  not  been  engraved,  I  re- 
turn you  the  MS.  of  them,  which  must  be  of  value  to  yourself. 
They  furnish  favorable  specimens  of  the  graphical  talent  of  your 
former  pupil.  Permit  me  to  add,  that  I  shall  always  be  ready 
and  happy  to  receive  with  particular  wecome  the  visit  of  which 
you  flatter  me  with  the  hope,  and  to  avail  myself  of  the  occasion 
of  assuring  you  personally  of  my  great  respect  and  esteem. 


TO    JOSEPH    C.    CABELL. 

MoNTicKLio,  February  3,  1824. 

Deak  Sik, — I  am  favored  with  your  two  letters  of  January  the 
26th  and  29th,  and  I  am  glad  that  yourself  and  the  friends  of 
the  University  are  so  well  satisfied,  that  the  provisos  amendatory 
of  the  University  Act  are  mere  nullities.  I  had  not  been  able  to 
put  out  of  my  head  the  Algebraical  equation,  which  was  among 
the  first  of  my  college  lessons,  that  a — a=0.  Yet  I  cheerfully 
arrange  myself  to  your  opinions.  I  did  not  suppose,  nor  do  I 
now  suppose  it  possible,  that  both  houses  of  the  legislature  should 


330  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

ever  consent,  for  an  additional  fifteen  thousand  dollars  of  revenue, 
to  set  all  the  Professors  and  students  of  the  University  adrift ; 
and  if  foreigners  will  have  the  same  confidence  which  we  have 
in  our  legislature,  no  harm  will  have  been  done  by  the  provisos. 

You  recollect  that  we  had  agreed  that  the  Visitors  who  are  of 
the  legislature  should  fix  on  a  certain  day  of  meeting,  after  the 
rising  of  the  Assembly,  to  put  into  immediate  motion  the  meas- 
ures which  this  act  was  expected  to  call  for.  You  will  of  course 
remind  the  Governor  that  a  re-appointment  of  Visitors  is  to  be 
made  on  the  day  following  Sunday,  the  29th  of  this  month ;  and 
as  he  is  to  appoint  the  day  of  their  first  meeting,  it  would  be  well 
to  recommend  to  him  that  which  our  brethren  there  shall  fix  on. 
It  may  be  designated  by  the  Governor  as  the  third,  fourth,  &c., 
day  after  the  rising  of  the  legislature,  which  will  give  it  certain- 
ty enough. 

You  ask  what  sum  would  be  desirable  for  the  purchase  of  books 
and  apparatus  ?  Certainly  the  largest  you  can  obtain.  Forty  or 
fifty  thousand  dollars  Would  enable  us  to  purchase  the  most  es- 
sential books  of  texts  and  reference  for  the  schools,  and  such  an 
apparatus  for  mathematics,  astronomy  and  chemistry,  as  may  en- 
able us  to  set  out  with  tolerable  competence,  if  we  can,  through 
the  banks  and  otherwise,  anticipate  the  whole  sum  at  once. 

I  remark  what  you  say  on  the  subject  of  committing  ourselves 
to  any  one  for  the  law  appointment.  Your  caution  is  perfectly 
just.  I  hope,  and  am  certain,  that  this  will  be  the  standing  law 
of  discretion  and  duty  with  every  member  of  our  board,  in  this 
and  all  cases.  You  know  we  have  all,  from  the  beginning,  con- 
sidered the  high  qualifications  of  our  professors,  as  the  only 
means  by  which  we  could  give  to  our  institution  splendor  and 
pre-eminence  over  all  its  sister  seminaries.  The  only  question, 
therefore,  we  can  ever  ask  ourselves,  as  to  any  candidate,  will 
be,  is  he  the  most  highly  qualified  ?  The  college  of  Philadel- 
phia has  lost  its  character  of  primacy  by  indulging  motives  of 
favoritism  and  nepotism,  and  by  conferring  the  appointments  as 
if  the  professorships  were  entrusted  to  them  as  provisions  for 
their  friends.     And  even  that  of  Edinburgh,  you  know,  is  also 


CORRESPONDENCE.  331 

much  lowered  from  the  same  cause.  We  are  next  to  obseive, 
that  a  man  is  not  qualified  for  a  professor,  knowing  nothing  but 
merely  his  own  profession.  He  should  be  otherwise  well  educat- 
ed as  to  the  sciences  generally ;  able  to  converse  understandingly 
with  the  scientific  men  with  whom  he  is  associated,  and  to  as- 
sist in  the  councils  of  the  faculty  on  any  subject  of  science  on 
which  they  may  have  occasion  to  deliberate.  Without  this,  he 
will  incur  their  contempt,  and  bring  disreputation  on  the  institu- 
tion. With  respect  to  the  professorship  you  mention,  I  scarcely 
know  any  of  our  judges  personally  ;  but  I  will  name,  for  exam- 
ple, the  late  Judge  Roane,  who,  I  believe,  was  generally  admit- 
ted to  be  among  the  ablest  of  them.  His  knowledge  was  con- 
fined to  the  common  law  chiefly,  which  does  not  constitute  one- 
half  of  the  qualification  of  a  really  learned  lawyer,  much  less  that 
of  a  professor  of  law  for  an  University.  And  as  to  any  other 
branches  of  science,  he  mast  have  stood  mute  in  the  presence  of 
his  literary  associates,  or  of  any  learned  strangers  or  others  visit- 
ing the  University.  Would  this  constitute  the  splendid  stand  we 
propose  to  take  ? 

In  the  course  of  the  trusts  I  have  exercised  through  life  with 
powers  of  appointment,  I  can  say  with  truth,  and  with  unspeak- 
able comfort,  that  1  never  did  appoint  a  relation  to  office,  and 
that  merely  because  I  never  saw  the  case  in  which  some  one  did 
not  ofi'er,  or  occur,  better  qualified  ;  and  I  have  the  most  unlimited 
confidence,  that  in  the  appointment  of  Professors  to  our  nursling 
institution,  every  individual  of  my  associates  will  look  with  a  single 
eye  to  the  sublimation  of  its  character,  and  adopt,  as  our  sacred 
motto, '' detur  dig?iiori."  In  this  way  it  will  honor  us,  nd  bless 
our  country. 

I  perceive  that  I  have  permitted  my  reflections  to  run  mto 
generalities  beyond  the  scope  of  the  particular  intimation  in  yom' 
letter.  I  will  let  them  go,  however,  as  a  general  confession  of 
faith,  not  belonging  merely  to  the  present  case. 

Name  me  affectionately  to  our  brethren  with  you,  and  be  as- 
sured yourself  of  my  constant  friendship  and  respect. 


332  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


TO    JARED    SPARKS. 

MoNTiCELLO,  February  4,  1 824. 

Dear  Sir, — I  duly  received  your  favor  of  the  13th,  and  with 
it,  the  last  number  of  the  North  American  Review.  This  has 
anticipated  the  one  I  should  receive  in  course,  but  have  not  yet 
received,  under  my  subscription  to  the  new  series.  The  article 
on  the  African  colonization  of  the  people  of  color,  to  which  you 
invite  my  attention,  I  have  read  with  great  consideration.  It  is, 
indeed,  a  fine  one,  and  will  do  much  good.  I  learn  from  it  more, 
too,  than  I  had  before  known,  of  the  degree  of  success  and  prom- 
ise of  that  colony. 

In  the  disposition  of  these  unfortunate  people,  there  are  two 
rational  objects  to  be  distinctly  kept  in  view.  First.  The  es- 
tablishment of  a  colony  on  the  coast  of  Africa,  which  may  intro- 
duce among  the  aborigines  the  arts  of  cultivated  life,  and  the 
blessings  of  civilization  and  science.  By  doing  this,  we  may 
make  to  them  some  retribution  for  the  long  course  of  injuries  we 
have  been  committing  on  their  population.  And  considering 
that  these  blessings  will  descend  to  the  "  nati  natorum,  et  qui 
nascentur  ab  illis"  we  shall  in  the  long  run  have  rendered  them 
perhaps  more  good  than  evil.  To  fulfil  this  object,  the  colony 
of  Sierra  Leone  promises  well,  and  that  of  Mesurado  adds  to  our 
prospect  of  success.  Under  this  view,  the  colonization  society 
is  to  be  considered  as  a  missionary  society,  having  in  view,  how- 
ever, objects  more  humane,  more  justifiable,  and  less  aggressive 
on  the  peace  of  other  nations,  than  the  others  of  that  appellation. 

The  econd  object,  and  the  most  interesting  to  us,  as  coming 
home  to  our  physical  and  moral  characters,  to  our  happiness  and 
safety,  is  to  provide  an  asylum  to  which  we  can,  by  degrees,  send 
the  whole  of  that  population  from  among  us,  and  establish  them 
under  our  patronage  and  protection,  as  a  separate,  free  and  inde- 
pendent people,  in  some  country  and  climate  friendly  to  human 
life  and  happiness.  That  any  place  on  the  coast  of  Africa  should 
answer  the  latter  purpose,  I  have  ever  deemed  entirely  impossible. 
And  without  repeating  the  other  arguments  which  have  been  urged 


CORRESPONDENCE.  383 

by  others,  I  will  appeal  to  figures  only,  which  admit  no  contro- 
versy. I  shall  speak  in  round  numbers,  not  absolutely  accurate, 
yet  not  so  wide  from  truth  as  to  vary  the  result  materially. 
There  are  in  the  United  States  a  million  and  a  half  of  people  of 
color  in  slavery.  To  send  off  the  whole  of  these  at  once,  no- 
body conceives  to  be  practicable  for  us,  or  expedient  for  them. 
Let  us  take  twenty-five  years  for  its  accomplishment,  within 
which  time  they  will  be  doubled.  Their  estimated  value  as  prop- 
erty, in  the  first  place,  (for  actual  property  has  been  lawfully 
vested  in  that  form,  and  who  can  lawfully  take  it  from  the  pos- 
sessors ?)  at  an  average  of  two  hundred  dollars  each,  young  and 
old,  would  amount  to  six  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  which  must 
be  paid  or  lost  by  somebody.  To  this,  add  the  cost  of  their 
transportation  by  land  and  sea  to  Mesurado,  a  year's  provision  of 
food  and  clothing,  implements  of  husbandry  and  of  their  trades, 
which  will  amount  to  three  hundred  millions  more,  making 
thirty-six  millions  of  dollars  a  year  for  twenty-five  years,  with 
insurance  of  peace  all  that  time,  and  it  is  impossible  to  look  at 
the  question  a  second  time.  I  am  aware  that  at  the  end  of  about 
sixteen  years,  a  gradual  detraction  from  this  sum  will  commence, 
from  the  gradual  diminution  of  breeders,  and  go  on  during  the 
remaining  nine  years.  Calculate  this  deduction,  and  it  is  still 
impossible  to  look  at  the  enterprise  a  second  time.  I  do  not  say 
this  to  induce  an  inference  that  the  getting  rid  of  them  is  forever 
impossible.  For  that  is  neither  my  opinion  nor  my  hope.  But 
only  that  it  cannot  be  done  in  this  way.  There  is,  I  think,  a 
way  in  which  it  can  be  done  ;  that  is,  by  emancipating  the  after- 
born,  leaving  them,  on  due  compensation,  with  their  mothers, 
until  their  services  are  worth  theii'  maintenance,  and  then  put- 
img  them  to  industrious  occupations,  until  a  proper  age  for  de- 
portation. This  was  the  result  of  my  reflections  on  the  subject 
five  and  forty  years  ago,  and  I  have  never  yet  been  able  to  con- 
ceive any  other  practicable  plan.  It  was  sketched  in  the  Notes 
on  Virginia,  under  the  fourteenth  query.  The  estimated  value 
of  the  new-born  infant  is  so  low,  (say  twelve  dollars  and  fifty 
cents,)  that  it  would  probably  be  yielded  by  the  owner  gratis. 


334  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

and  would  thus  reduce  the  six  hiindred  millions  of  dollars,  the 
first  head  of  expense,  to  thirty-seven  millions  and  a  half ;  leaving 
only  the  expenses  of  nourishment  while  with  the  mother,  and 
of  transportation.  And  from  what  fund  are  these  expenses  to 
be  furnished  ?  Why  not  from  that  of  the  lands  which  have 
been  ceded  by  the  very  States  now  needing  this  relief?  And 
ceded  on  no  consideration,  for  the  most  part,  but  that  of  the  gen- 
eral good  of  the  whole.  These  cessions  already  constitute  one 
fourth  of  the  States  of  the  Union.  It  may  be  said  that  these 
lands  have  been  sold ;  are  now  the  property  of  the  citizens  com- 
posing those  States ;  and  the  money  long  ago  received  and  ex- 
pended. But  an  equivalent  of  lands  in  the  territories  since  ac- 
quired, may  be  appropriated  to  that  object,  or  so  much,  at  least, 
as  may  be  sufficient ;  and  the  object,  although  more  important 
to  the  slave  States,  is  highly  so  to  the  others  also,  if  they  were 
serious  in  their  arguments  on  the  Missouri  question.  The  slave 
States,  too,  if  more  interested,  would  also  contribute  more  by 
their  gratuitous  liberation,  thus  taking  on  themselves  alone  the 
first  and  heaviest  item  of  expense. 

In  the  plan  sketched  in  the  Notes  on  Virginia,  no  particular 
place  of  asylum  was  specified  ;  because  it  was  thought  possible, 
that  in  the  revolutionary  state  of  America,  then  commenced, 
events  might  open  to  us  some  one  within  practicable  distance. 
This  has  now  happened.  St.  Domingo  has  become  independent, 
and  with  a  population  of  that  color  only ;  and  if  the  public  papers 
are  to  be  credited,  their  Chief  offers  to  pay  their  passage,  to  re- 
ceive them  as  free  citizens,  and  to  provide  them  employment. 
This  leaves,  then,  for  the  general  confederacy,  no  expense  but  of 
nurture  with  the  mother  a  few  years,  and  would  call,  of  course, 
for  a  very  moderate  appropriation  of  the  vacant  lands.  Suppose 
the  whole  annual  increase  to  be  of  sixty  thousand  effective  births, 
fifty  vessels,  of  four  hundred  tons  burthen  each,  constantly  em- 
ployed in  that  short  run,  would  carry  off'  the  increase  of  every 
year,  and  the  old  stock  would  die  oiF  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
nature,  lessening  from  the  commencement  until  its  final  disap- 
pearance.    In  this  way  no  violation  of  private  right  is  proposed, 


CORRESPONDENCE.  335 

Voluntary  surrenders  -would  probably  come  in  as  fast  as  the  means 
to  be  provided  for  their  care  would  be  competent  to  it.  Looking 
at  my  own  State  only,  and  I  presume  not  to  speak  for  the  others, 
I  verily  believe  that  this  surrender  of  property  would  not  amount 
to  more,  annually,  than  half  our  present  direct  taxes,  to  be  con- 
tinued fully  about  twenty  or  twenty-five  years,  and  then  gradually 
diminishing  for  as  many  more  until  their  final  extinction ;  and 
even  this  half  tax  would  not  be  paid  in  cash,  but  by  the  delivery 
of  an  object  which  they  have  never  yet  known  or  counted  as  part 
of  their  property  ;  and  those  not  possessing  the  object  will  be  called 
on  for  nothing.  I  do  not  go  into  all  the  details  of  the  burthens 
and  benefits  of  this  operation.  And  who  could  estimate  its  blessed 
effects  ?  I  leave  this  to  those  who  will  live  to  see  their  accom- 
plishment, and  to  enjoy  a  beatitude  forbidden  to  my  age.  But  I 
leave  it  with  this  admonition,  to  rise  and  be  doing.  A  million 
and  a  half  are  within  their  control ;  but  six  millions,  (which  a 
majority  of  those  now  living  will  see  them  attain,)  and  one  mill- 
ion of  these  fighting  men,  will  say,  "  we  will  not  go." 

I  am  aware  that  this  subject  involves  some  constitutional  scru- 
ples. But  a  liberal  construction,  justified  by  the  object,  may  go 
far,  and  an  amendment  of  the  constitution,  the  whole  length  ne- 
cessary. The  separation  of  infants  from  their  mothers,  too,  would 
produce  some  scruples  of  humanity.  But  this  would  be  straining 
at  a  gnat,  and  swallowing  a  camel. 

I  am  much  pleased  to  see  that  you  have  taken  up  the  subject 
of  the  duty  on  imported  books.  I  hope  a  crusade  will  be  kept 
up  against  it,  until  those  in  power  shall  become  sensible  of  this 
stain  on  our  legislation,  and  shall  wipe  it  from  their  code,  and  from 
the  remembrance  of  man,  if  possible. 

I  salute  you  with  assurances  of  high  respect  and  esteem. 


336  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


TO    ROBERT    J.    GARNETT. 

MoNTicELLO,  February  H,  1824. 

Dear  Sir, — I  have  to  thank  you  for  the  copy  of  Colonel  Tay- 
lor's New  Views  of  the  Constitution,  and  shall  read  them  with 
the  satisfaction  and  edification  which  I  have  ever  derived  from 
whatever  he  has  written.  But  I  fear  it  is  the  voice  of  one  crying 
in  the  wilderness.  Those  who  formerly  usurped  the  name  of 
federalists,  which,  in  fact,  they  never  were,  have  now  openly 
abandoned  it,  and  are  as  openly  marching  by  the  road  of  con- 
struction, in  a  direct  line  to  that  consolidation  which  was  always 
their  real  object.  They,  almost  to  a  man,  are  in  possession  of 
one  branch  of  the  government,  and  appear  to  be  very  strong  in 
yours.  The  three  great  questions  of  amendment  now  before 
you,  will  give  the  measure  of  their  strength.  I  mean,  1st,  the 
limitation  of  the  term  of  the  presidential  service  ;  2d,  the  placing 
the  choice  of  president  effectually  in  the  hands  of  the  people  ; 
3d,  the  giving  to  Congress  the  power  of  internal  improvement, 
on  condition  that  each  State's  federal  proportion  of  the  monies 
so  expended,  shall  be  employed  within  the  State.  The  friends 
of  consolidation  would  rather  take  these  powers  by  construction 
than  accept  them  by  direct  investiture  from  the  States.  Yet,  as 
to  internal  improvement  particularly,  there  is  probably  not  a 
State  in  the  Union  which  would  not  grant  the  power  on  the  con- 
dition proposed,  or  which  would  grant  it  without  that. 

The  best  general  key  for  the  solution  of  questions  of  power 
between  our  governments,  is  the  fact  that  "  every  foreign  and 
federal  power  is  given  to  the  federal  government,  and  to  the 
States  every  poweB  purely  domestic."  I  recollect  but  one  m- 
stance  of  control  vested  in  the  federal,  over  the  State  authorities 
ui  a  matter  purely  domestic,  which  is  that  of  metallic  tenders. 
The  federal  is,  in  truth,  our  foreign  government,  which  depart- 
ment alone  is  taken  from  the  sovereignty  of  the  separate  States. 

The  real  friends  of  the  constitution  in  its  federal  form,  if  they 
wish  it  to  be  immortal,  should  be  attentive,  by  amendments,  to 
make  it  keep  pace  with  the  advance  of  the  age  in  science  and 


COERESPONDENCE,  337 

experience.  Instead  of  this,  the  European  governments  have  re- 
sisted reformation,  until  the  people,  seeing  no  other  resource,  un- 
dertake it  themselves  by  force,  their  only  weapon,  and  work  it 
out  through  blood,  desolation  and  long-continued  anarchy.  Here 
it  will  be  by  large  fragments  breaking  off,  and  refusing  re-union 
but  on  condition  of  amendment,  or  perhaps  permanently.  If  I 
can  see  these  three  great  amendments  prevail,  I  shall  consider  it 
as  a  renewed  extension  of  the  term  of  our  lease,  shall  live  in 
more  confidence,  and  die  in  more  hope.  And  I  do  trust  that  the 
republican  mass,  which  Colonel  Taylor  justly  says  is  the  real 
federal  one,  is  still  strong  enough  to  carry  these  truly  federo-re- 
publican  amendments.  With  my  prayers  for  the  issue,  accept 
my  friendly  and  respectful  salutations. 


TO    MB.    ISAAC    ENGELBBECHT. 

MoNTicELLo,  February  25,  1824. 

SiK, — The  kindness  of  the  motive  which  led  to  the  request  of 
your  letter  of  the  14th  instant,  and  which  would  give  some  value 
to  an  article  from  me,  renders  compliance  a  duty  of  gratitude  ; 
knowing  nothing  more  moral,  more  sublime,  more  worthy  of 
your  preservation  than  David's  description  of  the  good  man,  in 
his  15th  Psalm,  I  will  here  transcribe  it  from  Brady  &  Tate's 
version : 

Lord,  who's  the  happy  man  that  may  to  thy  blest  courts  repair, 
Not  stranger-like,  to  visit  them,  but  to  inhabit  there  ? 
"Tis  he  whose  every  thought  and  deed  by  rules  of  virtue  moves. 
Whose  generous  tongue  disdains  to  speak  the  thing  his  heart  disproves. 
"Who  never  did  a  slander  forge,  his  neighbor's  fame  to  wound, 
Nor  hearken  to  a  false  report  by  malice  whispered  round. 
Who,  vice,  in  all  its  pomp  and  power,  can  treat  with  just  neglect; 
And  piety,  though  clothed  in  rags,  religiously  respect. 
Who,  to  his  plighted  vowa  and  trust,  has  ever  firmly  stood, 
And  though  he  promise  to  his  loss  he  makes  his  promise  good. 
Whose  soul  in  usury  disdains  his  treasure  to  employ, 
Whom  no  rewards  can  ever  bribe  the  guiltless  to  destroy. 
The  man  who  by  this  steady  course  has  happiness  ensured, 
When  earth's  foundation  shakes,  shall  stand  by  providence  secured. 
VOi.  VII.  22 


338  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Accept  this  as  a  testimony  of  my  respect  for  your  request,  an 
acknowledgment  of  a  due  sense  of  the  favor  of  your  opinion, 
and  an  assurance  of  my  good  will  and  best  wishes. 


I 

TO    MR.    WOODWABD. 

MoNTiOKLLO,  March  24,  1824. 

I  have  to  thank  you,  dear  Sir,  for  the  copy  I  have  received 
of  your  System  of  Universal  Science,  for  which,  I  presume,  I 
am  indebted  to  yourself.  It  will  be  a  monument  of  the  learning 
of  the  author  and  of  the  analyzing  powers  of  his  mind.  Whether 
it  may  be  adopted  in  general  use  is  yet  to  be  seen.  These  an- 
alytical views  indeed  must  always  be  ramified  according  to  their 
object.  Yours  is  on  the  great  scale  of  a  methodical  encyclope- 
dia of  all  human  sciences,  taking  for  the  basis  of  their  distribu- 
tion, matter,  mind,  and  the  union  of  both.  Lord  Bacon  founded 
his  first  great  division  on  the  faculties  of  the  mind  which  have 
"cognizance  of  these  sciences.  It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  ob- 
served by  any  one  that  the  origination  of  this  division  was  not 
with  him.  It  had  been  proposed  by  Charron  more  than  twenty 
years  before,  in  his  book  de  la  Sagesse,  B.  1,  c.  14,  and  an  im- 
perfect ascription  of  the  sciences  to  these  respective  faculties  was 
there  attempted.  This  excellent  moral  work  was  published  in 
1600.  Lord  Bacon  is  said  not  to  have  entered  on  his  great  work 
until  his  retirement  from  public  office  in  1621.  Where  sciences 
are  to  be  arranged  in  accommodation  to  the  schools  of  an  univer- 
sity, they  will  be  grouped  to  coincide  with  the  kindred  qualifica- 
tions of  Professors  in  ordinary.  For  a  library,  which  was  my 
object,  their  divisions  and  subdivisions  will  be  made  such  as  to 
throw  convenient  masses  of  books  under  each  separate  head. 
Thus,  m  the  library  of  a  physician,  the  books  of  that  science,  of 
which  he  has  many,  will  be  subdivivided  under  many  heads ; 
and  those  of  law,  of  which  he  has  few,  will  be  placed  under  a 
single  one.  The  lawyer,  again,  will  distribute  his  law  books 
under  many  subdivisions,  his  medical  under  a  single  one.     Your 


COERESPONDENOE.  339 

idea  of  making  the  subject  matter  of  the  sciences  the  basis  of 
their  distribution,  is  certainly  more  reasonable  than  that  of  the 
faculties  to  which  they  are  addressed.  The  materialists  will  per- 
haps criticize  a  basis,  one-half  of  which  they  will  say  is  a  non- 
existence ;  adhering  to  the  axiom  of  Aristotle,  "  nihil  est  in  in- 
tellectu  quod  prius  non  fuerit  in  sensu"  and  affirming  that  we 
can  have  no  evidence  of  any  existence  which  impresses  no  sense. 
Of  this  opinion  were  most  of  the  ancient  philosophers,  and  several 
of  the  early  and  orthodox  fathers  of  the  christian  church.  Indeed, 
Jesus  himself,  the  founder  of  our  religion,  was  unquestionably  a 
materialist  as  to  man.  In  all  his  doctrines  of  the  resurrection,  he 
teaches  expressly  that  the  body  is  to  rise  in  substance.  In  the 
Apostles'  Creed,  we  all  declare  that  we  believe  in  the  "resurrec- 
tion of  the  body."  Jesus  said  that  God  is  spirit  [tif u(i»]  with- 
out defining  it.  Tertullian  supplies  the  definition,  "  quis  nega- 
hit  Deum  esse  corpus,  etsi  Deus  Spiritus  7  spiritus  etiam  corporis 
sui  getieris  in  sua  effigie."  And  Origen,  "  itnuintjon  accipi,  docet, 
pro  eo  quod  non  est  simile  huic  nostro  crassiori  et  visibli  corpori, 
sed  quod  est  naturaliter  subtile  et  velut  aura  tenue."  The  mod- 
ern philosophers  mostly  consider  thought  as  a  function  of  our  ma- 
terial organization  ;  and  Locke  particularly  among  them,  charges 
with  blasphemy  those  who  deny  that  Omnipotence  could  give 
the  faculty  of  thinking  to  certain  combinations  of  matter. 

Were  I  to  re-compose  my  tabular  view  of  the  sciences,  I 
should  certainly  transpose  a  particular  branch.  The  naturalists, 
you  know,  distribute  the  history  of  nature  into  three  kingdoms 
or  departments :  zoology,  botany,  mineralogy.  Ideology  or  mind, 
however,  occupies  so  much  space  in  the  field  of  science,  that  we 
might  perhaps  erect  it  into  a  fourth  kingdom  or  department. 
But,  inasmuch  as  it  makes  a  part  of  the  animal  construction  only, 
it  would  be  more  proper  to  subdivide  zoology  into  physical  and 
moral.  The  latter  including  ideology,  ethics,  and  mental  science 
generally,  in  my  catalogue,  considering  ethics,  as  well  as  relig- 
ion, as  supplements  to  law  in  the  government  of  man,  I  had 
placed  them  in  that  sequence.  But  certainly  the  faculty  of 
thought  belongs  to  animal  history,  is  an  important  portion  of  it 


340  JEFFERSON'S   WOEKS. 

and  should  there  find  its  place.  But  these  are  speculations  in 
which  I  do  not  now  permit  myself  to  labor.  My  mind  unwill- 
ingly engages  in  severe  investigations.  Its  energies,  indeed,  are 
no  onger  equal  to  them.  Being  to  thank  you  for  your  book,  its 
subject  has  run  away  with  me  into  a  labyrinth  of  ideas  no  longer 
familiar,  and  writing  also  has  become  a  slow  and  irksome  opera- 
tion with  me.  I  have  been  obliged  to  avail  myself  of  the  pen 
of  a  granddaughter  for  this  communication.  I  will  here,  there- 
fore, close  my  task  of  thinking,  hers  of  writing,  and  yours  of  read- 
ing, with  assurances  of  my  constant  and  high  respect  and  esteem. 


TO    MR.    EDWAHD    EVEKETT. 

MoNTicELLO,  M.arch  21,  1824 

Dear  Sir, — I  have  to  thank  you  for  your  Greek  reader,  which, 
tor  the  use  of  schools,  is  evidently  preferable  to  the  Collectanea 
Grseca.  These  have  not  arranged  their  selections  so  well  in  gra- 
dation from  the  easier  to  the  more  difficult  styles. 

On  the  subject  of  the  Greek  ablative,  I  dare  say  that  your  his- 
torical explanation  is  the  true  one.  In  the  early  stages  of  lan- 
guages, the  distinctions  of  cases  may  well  be  supposed  so  few  as 
to  be  readily  effected  by  changes  of  termination.  The  Greeks, 
in  this  way,  seem  to  have  formed  five,  the  Latins  six,  and  to 
have  supplied  their  deficiences  as  they  occurred  in  the  progress 
of  development,  by  prepositive  words.  In  later  times,  the  Ital- 
ians, Spaniards,  and  French,  have  depended  on  prepositions  alto- 
gether, without  any  inflection  of  the  primitive  word  to  denote 
the  change  of  case.  What  is  singular  as  to  the  English  is,  that 
in  its  early  form  of  Anglo-Saxon,  having  distinguished  several 
cases  by  changes  of  termination,  at  later  periods  it  has  dropped 
these,  retains  but  that  of  the  genitive,  and  supplies  all  the  others 
by  prepositions.  These  subjects,  with  me,  are  neither  favorites 
nor  familiar ;  and  your  letter  has  occasioned  me  to  look  more 
into  the  particular  one  in  question  than  I  had  ever  done  before. 
Turning,  for  satisfaction,  to  the  work  of  Tracy,  the  most  pro- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  34I 

found  of  our  ideological  writers,  and  to  the  volume  particularly 
which  treats  of  grammar,  I  find  what  I  suppose  to  be  the  correct 
doctrine  of  the  case.  Omitting  unnecessary  words  to  abridge 
writing,  I  copy  what  he  says  :  "  II  y  a  des  langues  qui  par  cer- 
tains changemens  de  desinence,  appelles  cas,  indiquent  quelques- 
uns  des  rapports  des  noms  avec  d'autres  noms ;  mais  beaucoup 
de  langues  n'ont  point  de  cas  ;  et  celles  qui  en  ont,  n'en  ont  qu'un 
petit  nombre,  tandis  que  les  divers  rapports  qu'une  idee  pent  avoir 
avec  une  autre  sont  extremement  multiplies :  ainsi,  les  cas  ne 
peuvent  exprimer  qu'en  general,  les  principaux  de  ces  rapports. 
Aussi  dans  toutes  les  langues,  meme  dans  celles  qui  ont  des  cas, 
on  a  senti  le  besoin  de  mots  distincts,  separes  des  autres,  et  ex- 
pressement  destines  a  cet  usage  ;  ils  ce  qu'on  appelle  des  preposi- 
tions." 2  Tracy  Siemens  d'Ideologie,  c.  3,  '§>  5,  p.  114,  and  he 
names  the  Basque  "and  Peruvian  languages,  whose  nouns  have 
such  various  changes  of  termination  as  to  express  all  the  relations 
which  other  languages  express  by  prepositions,  and  therefore 
having  no  prepositions.  On  this  ground,  I  suppose,  then,  we 
may  rest  the  question  of  the  Greek  ablative.  It  leaves  with  me 
a  single  difficulty  only,  to-wit :  the  instances  where  they  have 
given  the  ablative  signification  to  the  dative  termination,  some 
of  which  I  quoted  in  my  former  letter  to  you. 

I  have  just  received  a  letter  from  Coray,  at  Paris,  of  the  28th 
December,  in  which  he  confirms  the  late  naval  success  of  the 
Greeks,  but  expresses  a  melancholy  fear  for  his  nation,  "  qui  a 
montre  jusqu'a  ce  moment  des  prodiges  de  valeur,  mais  qui, 
delivree  d'un  joug  de  Cannibass,  ne  pent  encore  posseder  ni  les 
legons  d'instruction,  ni  celles  de  I'experience."  I  confess  I  have 
the  same  fears  for  our  South  American  brethren  ;  the  qualifica- 
tions for  self-government  in  society  are  not  innate.  They  are 
the  result  of  habit  and  long  training,  and  for  these  they  wi.l  re- 
quire time  and  probably  much  suffering. 

I  salute  you  with  assurances  of  great  esteem  and  respect. 


34:2  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 


TO    EDWABD    LIVINGSTON. 

MoNTiCELLO,  April  4,  1 824. 

Dear  Sik, — It  was  with  great  pleasure  I  learned  that  the  good 
people  of  New  Orleans  had  restored  you  again  to  the  councils  of 
our  country.  I  did  not  doubt  the  aid  it  would  bring  to  the  re- 
mains of  our  old  school  in  Congress,  in  which  your  early  labors 
had  been  so  useful.  You  will  find,  I  suppose,  on  revisiting  our 
maritime  States,  the  names  of  things  more  changed  than  the 
things  themselves ;  that  though  our  old  opponents  have  given  up 
their  appellation,  they  have  not,  in  assuming  ours,  abandoned 
their  views,  and  that  they  are  as  strong  nearly  as  they  ever  were. 
These  cares,  however,  are  no  longer  mine.  I  resign  myself  cheer- 
fully to  the  managers  of  the  ship,  and  the  more  contentedly,  as  I 
am  near  the  end  of  my  voyage.  I  have  learned  to  be  less  confi- 
dent in  the  conclusions  of  human  reason,  and  give  more  credit  to 
the  honesty  of  contrary  opinions.  The  radical  idea  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  constitution  of  our  government,  which  I  have  adopted 
as  a  key  in  cases  of  doubtful  construction,  is,  that  the  whole  field 
of  government  is  divided  into  two  departments,  domestic  and 
foreign,  (the  States  in  their  mutual  relations  being  of  the  latter;) 
that  the  former  department  is  reserved  exclusively  to  the  respec- 
tive States  within  their  own  limits,  and  the  latter  assigned  to  a 
separate  set  of  functionaries,  constituting  what  may  be  called  the 
foreign  branch,  which,  instead  of  a  federal  basis,  is  established  as 
a  distinct  government  quoad  hoc,  acting  as  the  domestic  branch 
does  on  the  citizens  directly  and  coercively ;  that  these  depart- 
partments  have  distinct  directories,  co-ordinate,  and  equally  in- 
dependent and  supreme,  each  within  its  own  sphere  of  action. 
Whenever  a  doubt  arises  to  which  of  these  branches  a  power  be- 
longs, I  try  it  by  this  test.  I  recollect  no  case  where  a  question 
simply  between  citizens  of  the  same  State,  has  been  transferred 
to  the  foreign  department,  except  that  of  inhibiting  tenders  but 
of  metallic  money,  and  ex  post  facto  legislation.  The  causes  of 
these  singularities  are  well  remembered. 

I  thank  you  for  the  copy  of  your  speech  on  the  question  of 


OOREESPONDENOE.  343 

national  improvement,  which  I  have  read  with  great  pleasure, 
and  recognize  in  it  those  powers  of  reasoning  and  persuasion  of 
which  I  had  formerly  seen  from  you  so  many  proofs.  Yet,  in 
candor,  I  must  say  it  has  not  removed,  in  my  mind,  all  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  question.  And  I  should  really  be  alarmed  at  a  dif- 
ference of  opinion  with  you,  and  suspicious  of  my  own,  were  it 
not  that  I  have,  as  companions  in  sentiments,  the  Madisons,  the 
Monroes,  the  Randolphs,  the  Macons,  all  good  men  ^nd  true,  of 
primitive  principles.  In  one  sentiment  of  the  speech  I  particu- 
larly concur.  "If  we  have  a  doubt  relative  to  any  power,  we 
ought  not  to  exercise  it."  When  we  consider  the  extensive  and 
deep-seated  opposition  to  this  assumption,  the  conviction  enter- 
tained by  so  many,  that  this  deduction  of  powers  by  elaborate 
construction  prostrates  the  rights  reserved  to  the  States,  the  diffi- 
culties with  which  it  will  rub  along  in  the  course  of  its  exercise  ; 
that  changes  of  majorities  will  be  changing  the  system  back- 
wards and  forwards,  so  that  no  undertaking  mider  it  will  be  safe  ; 
that  there  is  not  a  State  in  the  Union  which  would  not  give  the 
power  willingly,  by  way  of  amendment,  with  some  little  guard, 
perhaps,  against  abuse  ;  I  cannot  but  think  it  would  be  the  wisest 
course  to  ask  an  express  grant  of  the  power.  A  government  held 
together  by  the  bands  of  reason  only,  requires  much  compromise 
of  opinion ;  that  things  even  salutary  should  not  be  crammed 
down  the  throats  of  dissenting  brethren,  especially  when  they 
may  be  put  into  a  form  to  be  willingly  swallowed,  and  that  a 
great  deal  of  indulgence  is  necessary  to  strengthen  habits  of  har- 
mony and  fraternity.  In  such  a  case,  it  seems  to  me  it  would  be 
safer  and  wiser  to  ask  an  express  grant  of  the  power.  This 
would  render  its  exercise  smooth  and  acceptable  to  all,  and  in- 
sure to  it  all  the  facilities  which  the  States  could  contribute,  to 
prevent  that  kind  of  abuse  which  all  will  fear,  because  all  know 
it  is  so  much  practised  in  public  bodies,  I  mean  the  bartering  of 
votes.  It  would  reconcile  every  one,  if  limited  by  the  proviso, 
that  the  federal  proportion  of  each  State  should  be  expended 
within  the  State.  With  this  single  security  against  partiality 
and  corrupt  bargaining,  I  suppose  there  is  not  a  State,  perhaps 


844  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

not  a  man  in  the  Union,  who  would  not  consent  to  atld  this  tc 
the  powers  of  the  general  government.  But  age  has  'v^eaned  me 
from  questions  of  this  kind.  My  delight  is  now  in  the  passive 
occupation  of  reading ;  and  it  is  with  great  reluctance  I  permit 
my  mind  ever  to  encounter  subjects  of  difficult  investigation. 
You  have  many  years  yet  to  come  of  vigorous  activity,  and  I 
confidently  trust  they  will  be  employed  in  cherishing  every 
measure  which  may  foster  our  brotherly  union,  and  perpetuate  a 
constitution  of  government  destined  to  be  the  primitive  and  pre- 
cious model  of  what  is  to  change  the  condition  of  man  over  the 
globe.  With  this  confidence,  equally  strong  in  your  powers  and 
purposes,  I  pray  you  to  accept  the  assurance  of  my  cordial  es- 
teem and  respect. 


TO    JOHN    HAMBDEN    PLEASANTS. 

MoNTicELLO,  April  19,  1824. 

Deah  Sir, — I  received  in  due  time  your  favor  of  the  12th,  re- 
questing my  opinion  on  the  proposition  to  call  a  convention  for 
amending  the  constitution  of  the  State.  That  this  should  not  be 
perfect  cannot  be  a  subject  of  wonder,  when  it  is  considered  that 
ours  was  not  only  the  first  of  the  American  States,  but  the  first 
nation  in  the  world,  at  least  within  the  records  of  history,  which 
peaceably  by  its  wise  men,  formed  on  free  deliberation,  a  consti- 
tution of  government  for  itself,  and  deposited  it  in  writing,  among 
their  archives,  always  ready  and  open  to  the  appeal  of  every  citi- 
zen. The  other  States,  who  successively  formed  constitutions 
for  themselves  also,  had  the  benefit  of  our  outline,  and  have  made 
on  it,  doubtless,  successive  improvements.  One  in  the  very  out- 
set, and  which  has  been  adopted  in  every  subsequent  constitu- 
tion, was  to  lay  its  foundation  in  the  authority  of  the  nation.  To 
our  convention  no  special  authority  had  been  delegated  by  the 
people  to  form  a  permanent  constitution,  over  which  their  suc- 
cessors in  legislation  should  have  no  powers  of  alteration.  They 
had  been  elected  for  the  ordinary  purposes  of  legislation  only, 


OOEEESPONDENCE.  345 

and  at  a  time  when  the  estabhshment  of  a  new  government  had 
not  been  proposed  or  contemplated.  Although,  therefore,  they 
gave  to  this  act  the  title  of  a  constitution,  yet  it  could  be  no  more 
than  an  act  of  legislation  subject,  as  their  other  acts  were,  to  al- 
teration by  their  successors.  It  has  been  said,  indeed,  that  the 
acquiescence  of  the  people  supplied  the  want  of  original  power. 
But  it  is  a  dangerous  lesson  to  say  to  them  "whenever  your 
functionaries  exercise  unlawful  authority  over  you,  if  you  do 
not  go  into  actual  resistance,  it  will  be  deemed  acquiescence  and 
confirmation."  How  long  had  we  acquiesced  under  usurpations 
of  the  British  parliament  ?  Had  that  confirmed  them  in  right, 
and  made  our  revolution  a  wrong  ?  Besides,  no  authority  has 
yet  decided  whether  this  resistance  must  be  instantaneous  ;  Avhen 
the  right  to  resist  ceases,  or  whether  it  has  yet  ceased  ?  Of  the 
twenty-four  States  now  organized,  twenty-three  have  disapproved 
our  doctrine  and  example,  and  have  deemed  the  authority  of  their 
people  a  necessary  foundation  for  a  constitution. 

Another  defect  which  has  been  corrected  by  most  of  the  States 
iS,  that  the  basis  of  our  constitution  is  in  opposition  to  the  princi- 
ple of  equal  political  rights,  refusing  to  all  but  freeholders  any 
participation  in  the  natural  right  of  self-government.  It  is  be- 
lieved, for  example,  that  a  very  great  majority  of  the  militia,  on 
whom  the  burthen  of  military  duty  was  imposed  in  the  late  war, 
were  men  unrepresented  in  the  legislation  which  imposed  this 
burthen  on  them.  However  nature  may  by  mental  or  physical 
disqualifications  have  marked  infants  and  the  weaker  sex  for  the 
protection,  rather  than  the  direction  of  government,  yet  among 
the  men  who  either  pay  or  fight  for  their  country,  no  line  of 
right  can  be  drawn.  The  exclusion  of  a  majority  of  our  free- 
men from  the  right  of  representation  is  merely  arbitrary,  and  an 
usurpation  of  the  minority  over  the  majority ;  for  it  is  believed 
that  the  non-freeholders  compose  the  majority  of  our  free  and 
adult  male  citizens. 

And  even  among  our  citizens  who  participate  in  the  represent- 
ative privilege,  the  equality  of  political  rights  is  entirely  prostrat- 
ed by  our  constitution.     Upon  which  principle  of  right  or  rea- 


846  JEFFEESON'S   WOEKS. 

son  can  any  one  justify  the  giving  to  every  citizen  of  Warwick 
as  much  weight  in  the  government  as  to  twenty-two  equal  citi- 
zens in  Loudon,  and  similar  inequalities  among  the  other  coun- 
ties ?  If  these  fundamental  principles  are  of  no  importance  in 
actual  government,  then  no  principles  are  important,  and  it  is  as 
well  to  rely  on  the  dispositions  of  an  administration,  good  or 
evil,  as  on  the  provisions  of  a  constitution. 

I  shall  not  enter  into  the  details  of  smaller  defects,  although 
others  there  doubtless  are,  the  reformation  of  some  of  which 
might  very  much  lessen  the  expenses  of  government,  improve  its 
organization,  and  add  to  the  wisdom  and  purity  of  its  adminis- 
tration in  all  its  parts ;  but  these  things  I  leave  to  others,  not  per- 
mitting myself  to  take  sides  in  the  political  questions  of  the  day. 
I  willingly  acquiesce  in  the  institutions  of  my  country,  perfect  or 
imperfect ;  and  think  it  a  duty  to  leave  their  modifications  to 
those  who  are  to  live  under  them,  and  are  to  participate  of  the 
good  or  evU  they  may  produce.  The  present  generation  has  the 
same  right  of  self-government  which  the  past  one  has  exercised 
for  itself.  And  those  in  the  full  vigor  of  body  and  mind  are 
more  able  to  judge  for  themselves  than  those  who  are  sinking 
under  the  wane  of  both.  If  the  sense  of  our  citizens  on  the 
question  of  a  convention  can  be  fairly  and  fully  taken,  its  result 
will,  I  am  sure,  be  wise  and  salutary ;  and  far  from  arrogating 
the  office  of  advice,  no  one  will  more  passively  acquiesce  in  it 
than  myself.  Retiring,  therefore,  to  the  tranquillity  called  for  by 
increasing  years  and  debility,  I  wish  not  to  be  understood  as  in- 
termeddling in  this  question ;  and  to  my  prayers  for  the  general 
good,  I  have  only  to  add  assurances  to  yourself  of  my  great  esteem. 


TO    MK.    DAVID    HARDING,    PKESIDENT    OF    THE    JEFFEIISON    DEBATING 
SOCIETY    OF    HINGHAM. 

MoNTiCELLO,  April  20,  1824. 

Sir, — I  have  duly  received  your  favor  of  the  6th  instant,  in- 
forming me  of  the  institution  of  a  debating  society  in  Hingham, 
composed  of  adherents  to  the  republican  principles  of  the  revolu- 


OORRESPONDEKOE.  347 

tion  ;  and  I  am  justly  sensible  of  the  honor  done  my  name  by 
associating  it  with  the  title  of  the  society.  The  object  of  the 
society  is  laudable,  and  in  a  republican  nation,  whose  citizens 
are  to  be  led  by  reason  and  persuasion,  and  not  by  force,  the  art 
of  reasoning  becomes  of  first  importance.  In  this  line  antiquity 
has  left  us  the  finest  models  for  imitation  ;  and  he  who  studies 
and  imitates  them  most  nearly,  will  nearest  approach  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  art.  Among  these  I  should  consider  the  speeches  of 
Livy,  Sallust,  and  Tacitus,  as  pre-eminent  specimens  of  logic, 
taste,  and  that  sententious  brevity  which,  using  not  a  word  to 
spare,  leaves  not  a  moment  for  inattention  to  the  hearer.  Am- 
plification is  the  vice  of  modern  oratory.  It  is  an  insult  to  an 
assembly  of  reasonable  men,  disgusting  and  revolting  instead  of 
persuading.  Speeches  measured  by  the  hour,  die  with  the  hour. 
I  will  not,  however,  further  indulge  the  disposition  of  the  age  to 
sermonize,  and  especially  to  those  surrounded  by  so  much  better 
advice.  With  my  apologies,  therefore,  for  hazarding  even  these 
observations,  and  my  prayers  for  the  success  of  your  institution, 
be  pleased  to  accept  for  the  society  and  yourself  the  assurances 
of  my  high  consideration. 


TO    KICHARD    HUSH. 

MoNTiCELLO,  April  26,  1824. 

Dear  Sik, — I  have  heretofore  informed  you  that  our  legisla- 
ture had  midertaken  the  establishment  of  an  University  in  Vir- 
ginia ;  that  it  was  placed  in  my  neighborhood,  and  under  the  di- 
rection of  a  board  of  seven  risitors,  of  whom  I  am  one,  Mr. 
Madison  another,  and  others  equally  worthy  of  confidence.  We 
have  been  four  or  five  years  engaged  in  erecting  our  buildings, 
all  of  which  are  now  ready  to  receive  their  tenants,  one  excepted, 
which  the  present  season  will  put  into  a  state  for  use.  The  last 
session  of  our  legislature  had  by  new  donations  liberated  the 
revenue  of  fifteen  M.  D.  a  year,  with  which  they  had  before  en- 
dowed the  institution,  and  we  propose  to  open  it  the  beginning 


348  JEFFEESON'S   WOEKS. 

of  the  next  year.  We  require  the  intervening  time  for  seeking 
out  and  engaging  Professors.  As  to  these  we  have  determined 
to  receive  no  one  who  is  not  of  the  first  order  of  science  in  hia 
line  ;  and  as  such  in  every  branch  cannot  be  obtained  with  us, 
we  propose  to  seek  some  of  them  at  least  in  the  countries  ahead 
of  us  in  science,  and  preferably  in  Great  Britain,  the  land  of  our 
own  language,  habits,  and  manners.  But  how  to  find  out  those 
who  are  of  the  first  grade  of  science,  of  sober  correct  habits  and 
morals,  harmonizing  tempers,  talents  for  communication,  is  the 
difficulty.  Our  first  step  is  to  send  a  special  agent  to  the  Uni- 
versities of  Oxford,  Cambridge  and  Edinburgh,  to  make  the  se- 
lection for  us ;  and  the  person  appointed  for  this  office  is  the  gen- 
tleman who  will  hand  you  this  letter, — Mr.  Francis  Walker 
Gilmer, — the  best-educated  subject  we  have  raised  since  the 
revolution,  highly  qualified  in  all  the  important  branches  of 
science,  professing  particularly  that  of  the  law,  which  he  has 
practised  some  years  at  our  Supreme  Court  with  good  success 
and  flattering  prospects.  His  morals,  his  amiable  temper  and 
discretion,  will  do  justice  to  any  confidence  you  may  be  willing 
to  place  in  him,  for  I  commit  him  to  you  as  his  mentor  and  guide 
in  the  business  he  goes  on.  We  do  not  certainly  expect  to  ob- 
tain such  known  characters  as  were  the  Cullens,  the  Robertsons 
and  Persons  of  Great  Britain,  men  of  the  first  eminence  estab- 
lished there  in  reputation  and  office,  and  with  emoluments  not 
to  be  bettered  anywhere.  But  we  know  that  there  is  another 
race  treading  on  their  heels,  preparing  to  take  their  places,  and 
as  well  and  sometimes  better  qualified  to  fill  them.  These 
while  unsettled,  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  competitors,  of  equal 
claims  and  perhaps  superior  credit  and  interest,  may  prefer  a 
comfortable  certainty  here  for  an  uncertain  hope  there,  and  a  lin- 
gering delay  even  of  that.  From  this  description  we  expect  we 
may  draw  professors  equal  to  those  of  the  highest  name.  The 
difficulty  is  to  distinguish  them ;  for  we  are  told  that  so  over- 
charged are  all  branches  of  business  in  that  country,  and  such  the 
difficulty  of  getting  the  means  of  living,  that  it  is  deemed  al- 
lowable in  ethics  for  even  the  most  honorable  minds  to  give 


CORRESPONDENCE.  349 

highly  exaggerated  recommendations  and  certificates  to  enable  a 
friend  or  protege  to  get  into  a  livelihood ;  and  that  the  moment 
our  agent  should  be  known  to  be  on  such  a  mission,  he  would 
be  overwhelmed  by  applications  from  numerous  pretenders,  all 
of  whom,  worthy  or  unworthy,  would  be  supported  by  such  rec- 
ommendations and  such  names  as  would  confound  all  discrimi- 
nation. On  this  head  our  trust  and  hope  is  in  you.  Your 
knowledge  of  the  state  of  things,  your  means  of  finding  out  a 
character  or  two  at  each  place,  truly  trustworthy,  and  into  whose 
hands  you  can  commit  our  agent  with  entire  safety,  for  informa- 
tion, caution  and  co-operation,  induces  me  to  request  your  patron- 
age and  aid  in  our  endeavors  to  obtain  such  men,  and  such  only 
as  will  fulfil  our  views.  An  unlucky  selection  in  the  outset 
would  forever  blast  our  prospects.  From  our  information  of  the 
character  of  the  different  Universities,  we  expect  we  should  go 
to  Oxford  for  our  classical  professor,  to  Cambridge  for  those  of 
Mathematics,  Natural  Philosophy  and  Natural  History,  and  to 
Edinburgh  for  a  professor  of  Anatomy,  and  the  elements  or  out- 
lines only  of  Medicine.  We  have  still  our  eye  on  Mr.  Blaetter- 
man  for  the  professorship  of  modern  languages,  and  Mr.  Gilmer 
is  instructed  to  engage  him,  if  no  very  material  objection  to  him 
may  have  arisen  unknown  to  us.  We  can  place  in  Mr.  Gilmer's 
hands  but  a  moderate  sum  at  present  for  merely  text  books  to 
begin  with,  and  for  indispensable  articles  of  apparatus.  Mathe- 
matical, Astronomical,  Physical,  Chemical  and  Anatomical.  We 
are  in  the  hope  of  a  sum  of  $50,000,  as  soon  as  we  can  get  a 
settlement  passed  through  the  public  offices.  My  experience  in 
dealing  with  the  bookseller  Lackington,  on  your  recommendation, 
has  induced  me  to  recommend  him  to  Mr.  Gilmer,  and  if  we  can 
engage  his  fidelity,  we  may  put  into  his  hands  the  larger  supply 
of  books  when  we  are  ready  to  call  for  it,  and  particularly  what 
we  shall  propose  to  seek  in  England. 

Although  I  have  troubled  you  with  many  particulars,  1'  vet 
leave  abundance  for  verbal  explanation  with  Mr.  Gilmer,  who 
possesses  a  full  knowledge  of  everything,  and  our  full  confidence 
in  everything.     He  takes  with  him  plans  of  our  establishment, 


350  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

which  we  think  it  may  be  encouraging  to  show  to  the  persons 
to  whom  he  will  make  propositions,  as  well  to  let  them  see  the 
comforts  provided  for  themselves,  as  to  show  by  the  extensive- 
ness  and  expense  of  the  scale,  that  it  is  no  ephemeral  thing  to 
which  they  are  invited. 

With  my  earnest  solicitations  that  you  will  give  us  al'  your 
aid  in  an  undertaking  on  which  we  rest  the  hopes  and  happiness 
of  out  country,  accept  the  assurances  of  my  sincere  friendship, 
attachment  and  respect. 


TO   JOSEPH    C.    CABELL. 

MoNTicELLO,  May  16,  1824. 

Dear  Sik, — Your  favor  of  the  5th,  from  Williamsburg,  has 
been  duly  received,  and  presents  to  us  a  case  of  pregnant  charac- 
ter, admitting  important  issues,  and  requiring  serious  considera- 
tion and  conduct ;  yet  I  am  more  inclined  to  view  it  with  hope 
than  dismay.  It  involves  two  questions.  First.  Shall  the  col- 
lege of  William  and  Mary  be  removed  ?  Second.  To  what 
place  ?  As  to  the  first,  I  never  doubted  the  lawful  authority  of 
the  legislature  over  the  college,  as  being  a  public  institution  and 
endowed  from  the  public  property,  by  public  agents  for  that  func- 
tion, and  for  public  purposes.  Some  have  doubted  this  author- 
ity without  a  relinquishment  of  what  they  call  a  vested  right  by 
the  body  corporate.  But  as  their  voluntary  relinquishment  is  a 
circumstance  of  the  case,  it  is  relieved  from  that  doubt.  I  cer- 
tainly never  wished  that  my  venerable  alma  mater  should  be  dis- 
turbed. I  considered  it  as  an  actual  possession  of  that  ancient 
and  earliest  settlement  of  our  forefathers,  and  was  disposed  to  see 
it  yielded  as  a  courtesy,  rather  than  taken  as  a  right.  They, 
however,  are  free  to  renounce  a  benefit,  and  we  to  receive  it. 
Had  we  dissolved  it  on  the  principle  of  right,  to  give  a  direction 
to  its  funds  more  useful  to  the  public,  the  professors,  although 
their  chartered  tenure  is  during  pleasure  only,  might  have  reason- 
ably expected  a  vale  of  a  year  or  two's  salary,  as  an  intermediate 


OOEEESPONDENCE.  351 

support,  until  they  could  find  other  employment  for  their  talents. 
And  notwithstanding  that  their  abandonment  is  voluntary,  this 
should  still  be  given  them.  On  this  first  question  I  think  we 
should  be  absolutely  silent  and  passive,  taking  no  part  in  it  until 
the  old  institution  is  loosened  from  its  foundation  and  fairly 
placed  on  its  wheels. 

2.  On  the  second  question,  to  what  place  shall  it  be  moved  ? 
we  may  take  the  field  boldly.  Richmond,  it  seems,  claims  it, 
but  on  what  ground  of  advantage  to  the  public  ?  When  the  pro- 
fessors, their  charter  and  funds  shall  be  translated  to  Richmond, 
will  they  become  more  enlightened  there  than  at  the  old  place  ? 
Will  they  possess  more  science  ?  be  more  capable  of  communi- 
cating it  ?  or  more  competent  to  raise  it  from  the  dead,  in  a  new 
sect,  than  to  keep  it  alive  in  the  ancient  one  ?  Or  has  Richmond 
any  peculiarities  more  favorable  for  the  communication  of  the 
sciences  generally  than  the  place  which  the  legislature  has  pre- 
ferred and  fixed  on  for  that  purpose  ?  This  will  not  be  pretend- 
ed. But  it  seems  they  possess  advantages  for  a  medical  school. 
Let  us  scan  them.  Anatomy  may  be  as  competently  taught  at 
the  University  as  at  Richmond,  the  only  subjects  of  discretion 
which  either  place  can  count  on  are  equally  acquirable  at  both. 
And  as  to  medicine,  whatever  can  be  learned  from  lectures  or 
books,  may  be  taught  at  the  University  of  Virginia  as  well  as  at 
Richmond,  or  even  at  Baltimore,  Philadelphia,  New  York,  or 
Boston,  with  the  inestimable  additional  advantage  of  acquiring, 
at  the  same  time,  the  kindred  sciences  by  attending  the  other 
schools.  But  Richmond  thinks  it  can  have  a  hospital  which  will 
furnish  subjects  for  the  clinical  branch  of  medicine.  The  classes 
of  people  which  furnish  subjects  for  the  hospitals  of  Baltimore, 
Philadelphia,  New  York  and  Boston,  do  not  exist  at  Richmond. 
The  shipping  constantly  present  at  those  places,  furnish  many 
patients.  Is  there  a  ship  at  Richmond  ?  The  class  of  white 
servants  in  those  cities  which  is  numerous  and  penniless,  and 
whose  regular  resource  in  sickness  is  always  the  hospital,  consti- 
tutes the  great  body  of  their  patients  ;  this  class  does  not  exist  at 
Richmond.     The  servants  there  are  slaves,  whose  masters  are  by 


352  JEFFEKSON'S   WORKS. 

law  obliged  to  take  care  of  them  in  sickness  as  in  health,  and 
who  could  not  be  admitted  into  a  hospital.  These  resources, 
then,  being  null,  the  free  inhabitants  alone  remain  for  a  hospital 
at  Richmond.  And  I  will  ask  how  many  families  in  Richmond 
would  send  their  husbands,  wives,  or  children  to  a  hospital,  in 
sickness,  to  be  attended  by  nurses  hardened  by  habit  against  the 
feelings  of  pity,  to  lie  in  public  rooms  harassed  by  the  cries  an(? 
sufferings  of  disease  under  every  form,  alarmed  by  the  groans  Oj 
the  dying,  exposed  as  a  corpse  to  be  lectured  over  by  a  clinical 
professor,  to  be  crowded  and  handled  by  his  students  to  hear 
their  case  learnedly  explained  to  them,  its  threatening  symptoms 
developed,  and  its  probable  termination  foreboded  ?  In  vindica- 
tion of  Richmond,  I  may  surely  answer  that  there  is  not  in  the 
place  a  family  so  heartless,  as,  relinquishing  their  own  tender 
cares  of  a  child  or  parent,  to  abandon  them  in  sickness  to  this 
last  resource  of  poverty ;  for  it  is  poverty  alone  which  peoples 
hospitals,  and  those  alone  who  are  on  the  charities  of  their  parish 
would  go  to  their  hospital.  Have  they  paupers  enough  to  fill  a 
hospital  ?  and  sickness  enough  among  these  ?  One  reason  alleged 
for  the  removal  of  the  college  to  Richmond  is  that  Williamsburg 
is  sickly,  is  happily  little  apt  for  the  situation  of  a  hospital.  No 
Sir ;  Richmond  is  no  place  to  furnish  subjects  for  clinical  lec- 
tures. I  have  always  had  Norfolk  in  view  for  this  purpose.  The 
climate  and  pontine  country  around  Norfolk  render  it  truly  sickly 
in  itself.  It  is,  moreover,  the  rendezvous  not  only  of  the  ship- 
ping of  commerce,  but  of  the  vessels  of  the  public  navy.  The 
United  States  have  there  a  hospital  already  established,  and  sup- 
plied with  subjects  from  these  local  circumstances.  I  had  thought 
and  have  mentioned  to  yourself  and  oxu-  colleagues,  that  when 
our  medical  school  has  got  well  under  way,  we  should  propose 
to  the  federal  government  the  association  with  that  establishment, 
and  at  our  own  expense,  of  the  clinical  branch  of  our  medica. 
school,  so  that  our  students,  after  qualifying  themselves  with  the 
other  branches  of  the  science  here,  might  complete  their  course 
of  preparation  by  attending  clinical  Jectures  for  six  or  twelve 
months  at  Norfolk. 


COERESPONDENOE.  353 

But  Richmond  has  another  claim,  as  being  the  seat  of  govern- 
ment. The  indisposition  of  Richmond  towards  our  University 
has  not  been  unfelt.  But  would  it  not  be  wiser  in  them  to  rest 
satisfied  with  the  government  and  their  local  academy  ?  Can  they 
afford,  on  the  question  of  a  change  of  the  seat  of  government,  by 
hostilizing  the  middle  counties,  to  tranfer  them  from  the  eastern 
to  the  western  interest  ?  To  make  it  their  interest  to  withdraw 
from  the  former  that  ground  of  claim,  if  used  for  adversary  pur- 
poses ?  With  things  as  they  are,  let  both  parties  remain  content 
and  united. 

If,  then,  William  and  Mary  is  to  be  removed,  and  not  to  Rich- 
mond, can  there  be  two  opinions  how  its  funds  are  to  be  directed 
to  the  best  advantage  for  the  public  ?     When  it  was  found  that 
that  seminary  was  entirely  ineffectual  towards  the  object  of  pub- 
lic education,  and  that  one  on  a  better  plan,  and  in  a  better  situa- 
tion, must  be  provided,  what  was  so  obvious  as  to  employ  for 
that  purpose  the  funds  of  the  one  abandoned,  with  what  more 
would  be  necessary,  to  raise  the  new  establishment  ?     And  what 
so  obvious  as  to  do  now  what  might  reasonably  have  been  done 
then,  by  consolidating  together  the  institutions  and  their  funds  ? 
The  plan  sanctioned  by  the  legislature  required  for  our  University 
ten  professors,  but  the  funds  appropriated  will  maintain  but  eight, 
and  some  of  these  are  consequently  over-burthened  with  duties  ; 
the  hundred  thousand  dollars  of  principal  which  you  say  still  re- 
mains to  William  and  Mary,  by  its  interest  of  six  thousand  dol- 
lars, would  give  us  the  two  deficient  professors,  with  an  annual 
surplus  for  the  purchase  of  books ;  and  certainly  the  legislature 
will  see  no  public  interest,  after  the  expense  incurred  on  the  new 
establishment,  in  setting  up  a  rival  in  the  city  of  Richmond ; 
they  cannot  think  it  better  to  have  two  institutions  crippling  one 
another,  than  one  of  healthy  powers,  competent  to  that  highest 
grade  of  instruction  which  neither,  with  a  divided  support,  could 
expect  to  attain. 

Another  argument  may  eventually  arise  in  favor  of  consolida. 
tion.  The  contingent  gift  at  the  late  session,  of  fifty  thousand 
dollars,  for  books  and  apparatus,  shows  a  sense  in  the  legislature 

VOL.  vir.  23 


354  JEFFERSON'S   "WORKS. 

that  those  objects  are  still  to  be  provided.  If  we  fail  in  obtaining 
that  sum,  they  will  feel  an  incumbency  to  provide  it  otherwise. 
What  so  ready  as  the  derelict  capital  of  William  and  Mary,  and 
the  large  library  they  uselessly  possess  ?  Should  that  college 
then  be  removed,  I  cannot  doubt  that  the  legislature,  keeping  in 
view  its  original  object,  will  consolidate  it  with  the  University. 

But  it  will  not  be  removed.  Richmond  is  doubtless  in  earnest, 
but  that  the  visitors  should  concur  is  impossible.  The  professors 
are  the  prime-movers,  and  do  not  mean  exactly  what  they  pro- 
pose. They  hold  up  this  raw-head  and  bloody-bones  in  terrorem 
to  us,  to  force  us  to  receive  them  into  our  institution.  Men  who 
have  degraded  and  foundered  the  vessel  whose  helm  was  en- 
trusted to  them,  want  now  to  force  their  incompetence  on  us.  I 
know  none  of  them  personally,  but  judge  of  them  from  the  fact 
and  the  opinion  I  hear  from  every  one  acquainted  with  the  case, 
that  it  has  been  destroyed  by  their  incompetence  and  mis-man- 
agement. Until  the  death  of  Bishop  Madison,  it  kept  at  its  usual 
stand  of  about  eighty  students.  It  is  now  dwindled  to  about 
twenty,  and  the  professors  acknowledge  that  on  opening  our 
doors,  theirs  may  be  shut.  Their  funds  in  that  case,  would  cer- 
tainly be  acceptable  and  salutary  to  us.  But  not  with  the  incu- 
bus of  their  faculty.  When  they  iind  that  their  feint  gives  us  no 
alarm,  they  will  retract,  will  recall  their  grammar  school,  make 
their  college  useful  as  a  sectional  school  of  preparation  for  the 
University,  and  teach  the  languages,  surveying,  navigation,  plane 
trigonometry,  and  such  other  elements  of  science  as  will  be 
useful  to  many  whose  views  do  not  call  for  a  university  educa- 
tion. 

I  will  only  add  to  this  long  letter  an  opinion  that  we  had  better 
say  as  little  as  we  can  on  this  whole  subject ;  give  them  no 
alarm  ;  let  them  petition  for  the  removal ;  let  them  get  the  old 
structure  completely  on  wheels,  and  not  till  then  put  in  our  claim 
to  its  reception.  I  shall  communicate  your  letter,  as  you  re- 
quest, to  Mr.  Madison,  and  with  it  this  answer.  Why  can  you 
not  call  on  us  on  your  way  to  Warminster,  and  make  this  a  sub- 
ject of  conversation  ?     With  my  devoted  respects  to  Mrs.  Cabell. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  355 

assure  her  that  she  can  be  nowhere  more  cordially  received  than 
by  the  family  of  Monticello.  And  the  deviation  from  your  di- 
rect road  is  too  small  to  merit  consideration.  Ever  and  affection- 
ately yonr  friend  and  servant. 


TO    MAJOB    JOHN    CARTWHIGHT. 

Monticello,  June  5,  1824. 

Dear  and  Venerable  Sib, — I  am  much  indebted  for  your  kind 
letter  of  February  the  29th,  and  for  your  valuable  volume  on  the 
English  constitution.  I  have  read  this  with  pleasure  and  much 
approbation,  and  think  it  has  deduced  the  constitution  of  the 
English  nation  from  its  rightful  root,  the  Anglo-Saxon.  It  is 
really  wonderful,  that  so  many  able  and  learned  men  should  have 
failed  in  their  attempts  to  define  it  with  correctness.  No  wonder 
then,  that  Paine,  who  thought  more  than  he  read,  should  have 
credited  the  great  authorities  who  have  declared,  that  the  will  of 
parliament  is  the  constitution  of  England.  So  Marbois,  before 
the  French  revolution,  observed  to  me,  that  the  Almanac  Royal 
was  the  constitution  of  France.  Your  derivation  of  it  from  the 
Anglo-Saxons,  seems  to  be  made  on  legitimate  principles.  Hav- 
ing driven  out  the  former  inhabitants  of  that  part  of  the  island 
called  England,  they  became  aborigines  as  to  you,  and  your 
lineal  ancestors.  They  doubtless  had  a  constitution ;  and  al- 
though they  have  not  left  it  in  a  written  formula,  to  the  precise 
text  of  which  you  may  always  appeal,  yet  they  have  left  frag- 
ments of  their  history  and  laws,  from  which  it  may  be  inferred 
with  considerable  certainty.  Whatever  their  history  and  laws 
show  to  have  been  practised  with  approbation,  we  may  presume 
was  permitted  by  their  constitution ;  whatever  was  not  so  prac- 
ticed, was  not  permitted.  And  although  this  constitution  was 
violated  and  set  at  naught  by  Norman  force,  yet  force  carmot 
change  right.  A  perpetual  claim  was  kept  up  by  the  nation,  by 
their  perpetual  demand  of  a  restoration  of  their  Saxon  laws , 
which  shows  they  were  never  relinquished  by  the  will  of  the 


356  •      JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

nation.  In  the  puUings  and  haulings  for  these  ancient  rights, 
between  the  nation,  and  its  kings  of  the  races  of  Plantagenets, 
Tudors  and  Stuarts,  there  was  sometimes  gain,  and  sometimes 
loss,  until  the  final  re-conquest  of  their  rights  from  the  Stuarts. 
The  destitution  and  expulsion  of  this  race  broke  the  thread  of 
pretended  inheritance,  extinguished  all  regal  usurpations,  and  the 
nation  re-entered  into  all  its  rights ;  and  although  in  their  bill  of 
rights  they  specifically  reclaimed  some  only,  yet  the  omission  of 
the  others  was  no  renunciation  of  the  right  to  assume  their  eser- 
cise  also,  whenever  occasion  should  occur.  The  new  King  re- 
ceived no  rights  or  powers,  but  those  expressly  granted  to 
him.  It  has  ever  appeared  to  me,  that  the  difiererice  between 
the  whig  and  the  tory  of  England  is,  that  the  whig  deduces  his 
rights  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  source,  and  the  tory  from  the  Nor- 
man. And  Hume,  the  great  apostle  of  toryism,  says,  in  so  many 
words,  note  AA  to  chapter  42,  that,  in  the  reign  of  the  Stuarts, 
"  it  was  the  people  who  encroached  upon  the  sovereign,  not  the 
sovereign  who  attempted,  as  is  pretended,  to  usurp  upon  the  peo- 
ple." This  supposes  the  Norman  usurpations  to  be  rights  in  his 
successors.  And  again,  0,  159,  "  the  commons  established  a  prin- 
ciple, which  is  noble  in  itself,  and  seems  specious,  but  is  belied 
by  all  history  and  experience,  that  the  people  are  the  origin  of  all 
just  power."  And  where  else  will  this  degenerate  son  of  science, 
this  traitor  to  his  fellow  men,  find  the  origin  oi  just  powers,  if 
not  in  the  majority  of  the  society  ?  Will  it  be  in  the  minority  ? 
Or  in  an  individual  of  that  minority  ? 

Our  Revolution  commenced  on  more  favorable  ground.  It 
presented  us  an  album  on  which  we  were  free  to  write  what  we 
pleased.  We  had  no  occasion  to  search  into  musty  records,  to 
hunt  up  royal  parchments,  or  to  investigate  the  laws  and  institu- 
tions of  a  semi-barbarous  ancestry.  We  appealed  to  those  of  na- 
ture, and  found  them  engraved  on  our  hearts.  Yet  we  did  not 
avail  ourselves  of  all  the  advantages  of  our  position.  We  had 
never  been  permitted  to  exercise  self-government.  When  forced 
to  assume  it,  we  were  novices  in  its  science.  Its  principles  and 
forms  had  entered  little  into  our  former  education.     We  estab- 


COREESPONDENOE.  357 

lished  however  some,  although  not  all  its  important  principles. 
The  constitutions  of  most  of  our  States  assert,  that  all  power  is 
inherent  in  the  people ;  that  they  may  exercise  it  by  themselves, 
in  all  cases  to  which  they  think  themselves  competent,  (as  in 
electing  their  functionaries  executive  and  legislative,  and  deciding 
by  a  jmy  of  themselves,  in  all  judiciary  cases  in  which  any  fact 
is  involved,)  or  they  may  act  by  representatives,  freely  and  equally 
chosen ;  that  it  is  their  right  and  duty  to  be  at  all  times  armed ; 
that  they  are  entitled  to  freedom  of  person,  freedom  of  religion, 
freedom  of  property,  and  freedom  of  the  press.  In  the  structure 
of  our  legislatures,  we  think  experience  has  proved  the  benefit 
of  subjecting  questions  to  two  separate  bodies  of  deliberants  ;  but 
in  constituting  these,  natural  right  has  been  mistaken,  some  mak- 
ing one  of  these  bodies,  and  some  both,  the  representatives  of 
property  instead  of  persons ;  whereas  the  double  deliberation 
might  be  as  well  obtained  without  any  violation  of  true  prin- 
ciple, either  by  requiring  a  greater  age  in  one  of  the  bodies,  or 
by  electing  a  proper  number  of  representatives  of  persons,  divid- 
ing them  by  lots  into  two  chambers,  and  renewing  the  division 
at  frequent  intervals,  in  order  to  break  up  all  cabals.  Virginia, 
of  which  I  am  myself  a  native  and  resident,  was  not  only  the 
first  of  the  States,  but,  I  believe  I  may  say,  the  first  of  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth,  which  assembled  its  wise  men  peaceably  to- 
gether to  form  a  fundamental  constitution,  to  commit  it  to  writ- 
ing, and  place  it  among  their  archives,  where  every  one  should 
be  free  to  appeal  to  its  text.  But  this  act  was  very  imperfect. 
The  other  States,  as  they  proceeded  successively  to  the  same 
work,  made  successive  improvements ;  and  several  of  them,  still 
further  corrected  by  experience,  have,  by  conventions,  still  fur- 
ther amended  their  first  forms.  My  own  State  has  gone  on  so 
far  with  its  premiere  ehauche ;  but  it  is  now  proposing  to  call  a 
convention  for  amendment.  Among  other  improvements,  I  hope 
they  will  adopt  the  subdivision  of  our  counties  into  wards.  The 
former  may  be  estimated  at  an  average  of  twenty-four  miles 
^uare ;  the  latter  should  be  about  six  miles  square  each,  and 
would  answer  to  the  hundreds  of  your  Saxon  Alfred.     In  each 


358  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

of  these  might  be,  1st.  An  elementary  school ;  2d.  A  company 
of  militia,  with  its  ofRicers;  3d.  A  justice  of  the  peace  and  con- 
stable ;  4th.  Each  ward  should  take  care  of  their  own  poor ; 
5th.  Their  own  roads ;  6th.  Their  own  police ;  7th.  Elect  within 
themselves  one  or  more  jurors  to  attend  the  courts  of  justice ; 
and  8th.  Give  in  at  their  Folk-house,  their  votes  for  all  function- 
aries reserved  to  their  election.  Each  ward  would  thus  be  a 
small  republic  within  itself,  and  every  man  in  the  State  would 
thus  become  an  acting  member  of  the  common  government,  trans- 
acting in  person  a  great  portion  of  its  rights  and  duties,  subor- 
dinate indeed,  yet  important,  and  entirely  within  his  competence. 
The  wit  of  man  cannot  devise  a  more  solid  basis  for  a  free,  dur- 
able and  well-administered  republic. 

With  respect  to  our  State  and  federal  governments,  I  do  not 
think  their  relations  correctly  understood  by  foreigners.  They 
generally  suppose  the  former  subordinate  to  the  latter.  But  this 
is  not  the  case.  They  are  co-ordinate  departments  of  one  simple 
and  integral  whole.  To  the  State  governments  are  reserved  all 
legislation  and  administration,  in  affairs  which  concern  their  own 
citizens  only,  and  to  the  federal  government  is  given  whatever 
concerns  foreigners,  or  the  citizens  of  other  States ;  these  func- 
tions alone  being  made  federal.  The  one  is  the  domestic,  the 
other  the  foreign  branch  of  the  same  government ;  neither  hav- 
ing control  over  the  other,  but  within  its  own  department.  There 
are  one  or  two  exceptions  only  to  this  partition  of  power.  But, 
you  may  ask,  if  the  two  departments  should  claim  each  the 
same  subject  of  power,  where  is  the  common  umpire  to  decide 
ultimately  between  them  ?  In  cases  of  little  importance  or  ur- 
gency, the  prudence  of  both  parties  will  keep  them  aloof  from 
the  questionable  ground ;  but  if  it  can  neither  be  avoided  nor 
compromised,  a  convention  of  the  States  must  be  called,  to  ascribe 
the  doubtful  power  to  that  department  which  they  may  think 
best.  You  will  perceive  by  these  details,  that  we  have  not  yet 
so  far  perfected  our  constitutions  as  to  venture  to  make  them  un- 
changeable. But  still,  in  their  present  state,  we  consider  them 
uot  otherwise  changeable  than  by  the  authority  of  the  people. 


OOEEESPONDENOE.  359 

on  a  spec'.al  election  of  representatives  for  that  purpose  expressly : 
they  are  until  then  the  lex  legum. 

But  can  they  be  made  unchangeable  ?  Can  one  generation 
bind  another,  and  all  others,  in  succession  forever  ?  I  think  not. 
The  Creator  has  made  the  earth  for  the  living,  not  the  dead. 
Righfe  and  powers  can  only  belong  to  persons,  not  to  things,  not 
to  mere  matter,  unendowed  with  will.  The  dead  are  not  even 
things.  The  particles  of  matter  which  composed  their  bodies, 
make  part  now  of  the  bodies  of  other  animals,  vegetables,  or  min- 
erals, of  a  thousand  forms.  To  what  then  are  attached  the  rights 
and  powers  they  held  while  in  the  form  of  men  ?  A  generation 
may  bind  itself  as  long  as  its  majority  continues  in  life  ;  when 
that  has  disappeared,  another  majority  is  in  place,  holds  all  the 
rights  and  powers  their  predecessors  once  held,  and  may  change 
their  laws  and  institutions  to  suit  themselves.  Nothing  then  is 
unchangeable  but  the  inherent  and  unalienable  rights  of  man. 

I  was  glad  to  find  in  your  book  a  formal  contradiction,  at 
length,  of  the  judiciary  usurpation  of  legislative  powers  ;  for  such 
the  judges  have  usurped  in  their  repeated  decisions,  that  Chris- 
tianity is  a  part  of  the  common  law.  The  proof  of  the  contrary, 
which  you  have  adduced,  is  incontrovertible ;  to  wit,  that  the 
common  law  existed  while  the  Anglo-Saxons  were  yet  Pagans, 
at  a  time  when  they  had  never  yet  heard  the  name  of  Christ 
pronounced,  or  knew  that  such  a  character  had  ever  existed. 
But  it  may  amuse  you,  to  show  when,  and  by  what  means,  they 
stole  this  law  in  upon  us.  In  a  case  of  quare  iinpedit  in  the 
Year-book  34,  H,  6,  folio  38,  (anno  1458,)  a  question  was  made, 
how  far  the  ecclesiastical  law  was  to  be  respected  in  a  common 
law  court  ?  And  Prisot,  Chief  Justice,  gives  his  opinion  in  these 
words :  "A  tiel  leis  qu'  ils  de  seint  eglise  out  en  micien  scrip- 
ture, covient  a  nous  a  donner  credence  ;  car  ceo  common  ley  sur 
quels  touts  manners  leis  sont  fondes.  Et  auxy.  Sir,  nous  sumus 
obleges  de  conustre  loin:  ley  de  saint  eglise ;  et  semblablement  ils 
sont  obliges  de  consustre  nostre  ley.  Et,  Sir,  si  poit  apperer  or  a 
nous  que  I'evesque  ad  fait  come  un  ordinary  fera  en  tiel  cas,  adong 
nous  devons  cee  adjuger  bon,  ou  auterment  nemy,"  &c.     See  S. 


360  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

C.  Fitzh.  Abr.  Glu.  imp.  89,  Bro.  Abr.  Q,u.  imp.  12.  Finch  in 
his  first  book,  c.  3,  is  the  first  afterwards  who  quotes  this  case 
and  mistakes  it  thus  :  '•  To  such  laws  of  the  church  as  have 
warrant  in  holy  scripture,  our  law  giveth  credence."  And  cites 
Prisot ;  mistranslating  "  ancien  scripture,''''  into  "  holy  scriptureJ" 
Whereas  Prisot  palpably  says,  "to  such  laws  as  those  of '  holy 
church  have  in  ancient  writing,  it  is  proper  for  us  to  give  cre- 
dence," to  wit,  to  their  ancient  written  laws.  This  was  in  1613, 
a  century  and  a  half  after  the  dictum  of  Prisot.  Wingate,  in 
1658,  erects  this  false  translation  into  a  maxim  of  the  common 
law,  copying  the  words  of  Finch,  but  citing  Prisot,  Wing.  Max. 
3.  And  Sheppard,  title,  "  Religion,"  in  1675,  copies  the  same 
mistranslation,  quoting  the  Y.  B.  Finch  and  Wingate.  Hale  ex- 
presses it  in  these  words :  "  Christianity  is  parcel  of  the  laws  of 
England."  1  Ventr.  293,  3  Keb.  607.  But  he  quotes  no  au- 
thority. By  these  echoings  and  re-echoings  from  one  to  another, 
it  had  become  so  established  in  1728,  that  in  the  case  of  the 
King  vs.  Woolston,  2  Stra.  834,  the  court  would  not  sufiier  it  to 
be  debated,  whether  to  write  against  Christianity  was  punishable 
in  the  temporal  court  at  common  law  ?  Wood,  therefore,  409, 
ventures  still  to  vary  the  phrase,  and  say,  that  all  blasphemy  and 
profaneness  are  oifences  by  the  common  law ;  and  cites  2  Stra. 
Then  Blackstone,  in  1763,  IV.  59,  repeats  the  words  of  Hale, 
that  "  Christianity  is  part  of  the  laws  of  England,"  citing  Ventris 
and  Strange.  And  finally.  Lord  Mansfield,  with  a  little  qualifi- 
cation, in  Evans'  case,  in  1767,  says,  that  "  the  essential  princi- 
ples of  revealed  religion  are  part  of  the  common  law."  Thus 
ingulphing  Bible,  Testament  and  all  into  the  common  law,  with- 
out citing  any  authority.  And  thus  we  find  this  chain  of  author- 
ities hanging  link  by  link,  one  upon  another,  and  all  ultimately 
on  one  and  the  same  hook,  and  that  a  mistranslation  of  the  words 
•'  ancien  scripture,"  used  by  Prisot.  Finch  quotes  Prisot ;  Win- 
gate does  the  same.  Sheppard  quotes  Prisot,  Finch  and  Wing- 
ate. Hale  cites  nobody.  The  court  in  Woolston's  case,  cites 
Hale.  Wood  cites  Woolston's  case.  Blackstone  quotes  Wool- 
ston's case  and  Hale.     And  Lord  Mansfield,  like  Hale,  ventures 


COERESPOFDENCE.  361 

it  on  his  own  authority.  Here  I  might  defy  the  best-read  law- 
yer to  produce  another  scrip  of  authority  for  this  judiciary  forg- 
ery ;  and  1  might  go  on  further  to  show,  how  some  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  priests  interpolated  into  the  text  of  Alfred's  laws,  the  20th, 
21st,  22d,  and  23d  chapters  of  Exodus,  and  the  15th  of  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles,  from  the  23d  to  the  29th  verses.  But  this  would 
lead  my  pen  and  your  patience  too  far.  What  a  conspiracy  this, 
between  Church  and  State  !  Sing  Tantarara,  rogues  all,  rogues 
all,  Sing  Tantarara,  rogues  all ! 

I  must  still  add  to  this  long  and  rambling  letter,  my  acknowl- 
edgments for  your  good  wishes  to  the  University  we  are  now  es- 
tablishing in  this  State.  There  are  some  novelties  in  it.  Of 
that  of  a  professorship  of  the  principles  of  government,  you  ex- 
press your  approbation.  They  will  be  founded  in  the  rights  of 
man.  That  of  agriculture,  I  am  sure,  you  will  approve  ;  and 
that  also  of  Anglo-Saxon.  As  the  histories  and  laws  left  us  in 
that  type  and  dialect,  must  be  the  text  books  of  the  reading  of  the 
learners,  they  will  imbibe  with  the  language  their  free  principles 
of  government.  The  volumes  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send, 
shall  be  placed  in  the  library  of  the  University.  Having  at  this 
time  in  England  a  person  sent  for  the  purpose  of  selecting  some 
Professors,  a  Mr.  Gilmer  of  my  neighborhood,  I  cannot  but  rec- 
ommend him  to  your  patronage,  counsel  and  guardianship,  against 
imposition,  misinformation,  and  the  deceptions  of  partial  and  false 
recommendations,  in  the  selection  of  characters.  He  is  a  gentle- 
man of  great  worth  and  correctness,  my  particular  friend,  well 
educated  in  various  branches  of  science,  and  worthy  of  entire 
confidence. 

Your  age  of  eighty-four  and  mine  of  eighty-one  years,  insure 
us  a  speedy  meeting.  We  may  then  commune  at  leisure,  and 
more  fuUy,  on  the  good  and  evil  which,  in  the  course  of  our 
long  lives,  we  have  both  witnessed  ;  and  in  the  meantime,  I  pray 
you  to  accept  assurances  of  my  high  veneration  and  esteem  for 
yom'  person  and  character. 


362  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 


TO    MARTIN   TAN    BUKEN. 

MoNTicKLLO,  June  29,  1824. 

Dear  Sir, — I  have  to  thank  you  for  Mr.  Pickering's  elaborate 
philippic  against  Mr.  Adams,  Gerry,  Smith,  and  myself;  and  I 
have  delayed  the  acknowledgment  until  I  could  read  it  and  make 
some  observations  on  it. 

I  could  not  have  believed,  that  for  so  many  years,  and  to  such 
a  period  of  advanced  age,  he  could  have  nourished  passions  so 
vehement  and  viperous.  It  appears,  that  for  thirty-years  past, 
he  has  been  industriously  collecting  materials  for  vituperating  the 
characters  he  had  marked  for  his  hatred ;  some  of  whom,  certain- 
ly, if  enmities  towards  him  had  ever  existed,  had  forgotten  them 
all,  or  buried  them  in  the  grave  with  themselves.  As  to  myself, 
there  never  had  been  anything  personal  between  us,  nothing  but 
the  general  opposition  of  party  sentiment ;  and  our  personal  in- 
tercourse had  been  that  of  urbanity,  as  himself  says.  But  it 
seems  he  has  been  all  this  time  brooding  over  an  enmity  which 
I  had  never  felt,  and  that  with  respect  to  myself,  as  well  as  oth- 
ers, he  has  been  writing  far  and  near,  and  in  every  direction,  to 
get  hold  of  original  letters,  where  he  could,  copies,  where  he 
could  not,  certificates  and  journals,  catching  at  every  gossiping 
story  he  could  hear  of  in  any  quarter,  supplying  by  suspicions 
what  he  could  find  nowhere  else,  and  then  arguing  on  this  mot- 
ley farrago,  as  if  established  on  gospel  evidence.  And  while  ex- 
pressing his  wonder,  that  "  at  the  age  of  eighty-eight,  the  strong 
passions  of  Mr.  Adams  should  not  have  cooled  ;"  that  on  the  con- 
trary, "they  had  acquired  the  mastery  of  his  soul,"  (p.  100;) 
that  "  where  these  were  enlisted,  no  reliance  could  be  placed  on 
his  statements,"  (p.  104;)  the  facility  and  little  truth  with  which 
he  could  represent  facts  and  occurrences,  concerning  persons  who 
were  the  objects  of  his  hatred,  (p.  3 ;)  that  "  he  is  capable  of 
making  the  grossest  misrepresentations,  and,  from  detached  facts, 
and  often  from  bare  suspicions,  of  drawing  unwarrantable  infer- 
ences, if  suited  to  his  purpose  at  the  instant,"  (p.  174;)  while 
making  such  charges,  I  say,  on  Mr,  Adams,  instead  of  his  "  ecce 


OOERESPONDENOE.  363 

homo"  (p.  100 ;)  how  justly  might  we  say  to  him,  "  mutato  nom- 
ine, de  tefabtda  7iarratur."  For  the  assiduity  and  industry  he 
has  employed  in  his  benevolent  researches  after  matter  of  crim- 
ination against  us,  I  refer  to  his  pages  13,  14,  34,  36,  46,  71.  79, 
90,  bis.  92,  93,  bis.  101,  ter.  104,  116,  118,  141,  143,  146,  150, 
151,  153,  168,  171,  172.  That  Mr.  Adams'  strictures  on  him, 
written  and  printed,  should  have  excited  some  notice  on  his  part, 
was  not  perhaps  to  be  wondered  at.  But  the  sufficiency  of  his 
motive  for  the  large  attack  on  me  may  be  more  questionable. 
He  says,  (p.  4)  "  of  Mr.  Jefferson  I  should  have  said  nothing,  but 
for  his  letter  to  Mr.  Adams,  of  October  the  12th,  1823."  Now 
the  object  of  that  letter  was  to  soothe  the  feelings  of  a  friend, 
wounded  by  a  publication  which  I  thought  an  "  outrage  on  pri- 
vate confidence."  Not  a  word  or  allusion  in  it  respecting  Mr. 
Pickering,  nor  was  it  suspected  that  it  would  draw  forth  his  pen 
in  justification  of  this  infidelity,  which  he  has,  however,  under- 
taken in  the  course  of  his  pamphlet,  but  more  particularly  in  its 
conclusion. 

He  arraigns  me  on  two  grounds,  my  actions  and  my  motives. 
The  very  actions,  however,  which  he  arraigns,  have  laeen  such 
as  the  great  majority  of  my  fellow  citizens  have  approved.  The 
approbation  of  Mr.  Pickering,  and  of  those  who  thought  with 
him,  I  had  no  right  to  expect.  My  motives  he  chooses  to  ascribe 
to  hypocrisy,  to  ambition,  and  a  passion  for  popularity.  Of  these 
the  world  must  judge  between  us.  It  is  no  office  of  his  or  mine. 
To  that  tribunal  I  have  ever  submitted  my  actions  and  motives, 
without  ransacking  the  Union  for  certificates,  letters,  journals, 
and  gossiping  tales,  to  justify  myself  and  weary  them.  Nor  shall 
I  do  this  on  the  present  occasion,  but  leave  still  to  them  these 
antiquated  party  diatribes,  now  newly  revamped  and  paraded,  as 
if  they  had  not  been  aheady  a  thousand  times  repeated,  refuted, 
and  adjudged  against  him,  by  the  nation  itself.  If  no  action  is 
to  be  deemed  virtuous  for  which  malice  can  imagine  a  sinister 
motive,  then  there  never  was  a  virtuous  action ;  no,  not  even  in 
the  life  of  our  Saviour  himself.     But  he  has  taught  us  to  judge 


364  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

the  tree  by  its  fruit,  and  to  leave  motives  to  him  who  can  alone 
see  into  them. 

But  whilst  I  leave  to  its  fate  the  libel  of  Mr.  Pickering,  with 
the  thousands  of  others  like  it,  to  which  I  have  given  no  other 
answer  than  a  steady  course  of  similar  action,  there  are  two  facts 
or  fancies  of  his  which  I  must  set  to  rights.  The  one  respects 
Mr.  Adams,  the  other  myself.  He  observes  that  my  letter  of 
October  the  12th,  1823,  acknowledges  the  receipt  of  one  from 
Mr.  Adams,  of  September  the  18th,  which,  having  been  written 
a  few  days  after  Cunningham's  publication,  he  says  was  no  doubt 
written  to  apologize  to  me  for  the  pointed  reproaches  he  had  ut- 
tered against  me  in  his  confidential  letters  to  Cunningham.  And 
thus  having  "no  doubt"  of  his  conjecture,  he  considers  it  as 
proven,  goes  on  to  suppose  the  contents  of  the  letter,  (19,  22,) 
makes  it  place  Mr.  Adams  at  my  feet'  suing  for  pardon,  and  con- 
tinues to  rant  upon  it,  as  an  undoubted  fact.  Now,  I  do  most 
solemnly  declare,  that  so  far  from  being  a  letter  of  apology,  as 
Mr.  Pickering  so  undoubtedly  assumes,  there  was  not  a  word  or 
allusion  in  it  respecting  Cunningham's  publication. 

The  other  allegation  respecting  myself,  is  equally  false.  In 
page  34,  he  quotes  Doctor  Stuart  as  having,  tweiity  years  ago, 
informed  him  that  General  Washington,  "  when  he  became  a 
private  citizen,"  called  me  to  account  for  expressions  in  a  letter 
to  Mazzei,  requiring,  in  a  tone  of  unusual  severity,  an  explana- 
tion of  that  letter.  He  adds  of  himself,  "  in  what  manner  the 
latter  humbled  himself  and  appeased  the  just  resentment  of 
Washington,  will  never  be  made  known,  as  some  time  after  his 
death  the  correspondence  was  not  to  be  found,  and  a  diary  for  an 
important  period  of  his  presidency  was  also  missing."  The  diary 
being  of  transactions  during  his  presidency,  the  letter  to  Mazzei 
not  known  here  until  some  time  after  he  became  a  private  citi- 
zen, and  the  pretended  correspondence  of  course  after  that,  I 
know  not  why  this  lost  diary  and  supposed  correspondence  are 
brought  together  here,  unless  for  insinuations  worthy  of  the  letter 
itself.  The  correspondence  could  not  be  found,  indeed,  because 
it  had  never  existed.     I  do  affirm  that  there  never  passed  a  word, 


COERESPOITDEN'OE.  3g5 

written  or  verbal,  directly  or  indirectly,  between  General  Wash- 
ington and  myself  on  the  subject  of  that  letter.  He  would 
never  have  degraded  himself  so  far  as  to  take  to  himself  the  im- 
putation in  that  letter  on  the  "  Samsons  in  combat."  The 
whole  story  is  a  fabrication,  and  I  defy  the  framers  of  it,  and  all 
mankind,  to  produce  a  scrip  of  a  pen  between  General  Washing- 
ton and  myself  on  the  subject,  or  any  other  evidence  more  wor- 
thy of  credit  than  the  suspicions,  suppositions  and  presumptions 
of  the  two  persons  here  quoting  and  quoted  for  it.  With  Doctor 
Stuart  I  had  not  much  acquaintance.  I  supposed  him  to  be  an 
honest  man,  knew  him  to  be  a  very  weak  one.  and,  like  Mr. 
Pickering,  very  prone  to  antipathies,  boiling  with  party  passions, 
and  under  the  dominion  of  these  readily  welcoming  fancies  for 
facts.  But  come  the  story  from  whomsoever  it  might,  it  ia  d.n 
unqualified  falsehood. 

This  letter  to  Mazzei  has  been  a  precious  theme  of  ciiniina- 
tion  for  federal  malice.  It  was  a  long  letter  of  business,  in  cvhich 
was  inserted  a  single  paragraph  only  of  political  information  as 
to  the  state  of  our  country.  In  this  information  there  was  not 
one  word  which  would  not  then  have  been,  or  would  not  now 
be  approved  by  every  republican  in  the  United  States,  looking 
back  to  those  times,  as  you  will  see  by  a  faithful  copy  now  en- 
closed of  the  whole  of  what  that  letter  said  on  the  subject  of  the 
United  States,  or  of  its  government.  This  paragraph,  extracted 
and  translated,  got  into  a  Paris  paper  at  a  time  when  the  persons 
in  power  there  were  laboring  under  very  general  disfavor,  and 
their  friends  were  eager  to  catch  even  at  straws  to  buoy  them 
up.  To  them,  therefore,  I  have  always  imputed  the  interpola- 
tion of  an  entire  paragraph  additional  to  mine,  which  makes  me 
charge  my  own  country  with  ingratitude  and  injustice  to  France 
There  was  not  a  word  in  my  letter  respecting  France,  or  any  of 
the  proceedings  or  relations  between  this  country  and  that.  Yet 
this  interpolated  paragraph  has  been  the  burthen  of  federal  cal- 
umny, has  been  constantly  quoted  by  them,  made  the  subject  of 
unceasing  and  virulent  abuse,  and  is  still  quoted,  as  you  see,  by  Mr. 
Pickering,  page  33,  as  if  it  were  genuine,  and  really  written  by 


366  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

me.  And  even  Judge  Marshall  makes  history  descend  from  its 
dignity,  and  the  ermine  from  its  sanctity,  to  exaggerate,  to  re- 
cord, and  to  sanction  this  forgery.  In  the  very  last  note  of  his 
book,  he  says,  "  a  letter  from  Mr.  Jefferson  to  Mr.  Mazzei,  au 
Italian,  was  published  in  Florence,  and  re-publishfid  in  the  Moni- 
teur,  with  very  severe  strictures  on  the  conduct  of  the  United 
States."  And  instead  of  the  letter  itself,  he  copies  what  he  says 
are  the  remarks  of  the  editor,  which  are  an  exaggerated  com- 
mentary on  the  fabricated  paragraph  itself,  and  silently  leaves  to 
his  reader  to  make  the  ready  inference  that  these  were  the  sen- 
timents of  the  letter.  Proof  is  the  duty  of  the  affirmative  side. 
A  negative  cannot  be  positively  proved.  But,  in  defect  of  im- 
possible proof  of  what  was  not  in  the  original  letter,  I  have  its 
press-copy  still  in  my  possession.  It  has  been  shown  to  several, 
and  is  open  to  any  one  who  wishes  to  see  it.  I  have  presumed 
only,  that  the  interpolation  was  done  in  Paris.  But  I  never  saw 
the  letter  in  either  its  Italian  or  French  dress,  and  it  may  have 
been  done  here,  with  the  commentary  handed  down  to  posterity 
by  the  Judge.  The  genuine  paragraph,  re-translated  through 
Italian  and  French  into  English,  as  it  appeared  here  in  a  federal 
paper,  besides  the  mutilated  hue  which  these  translations  and  re- 
translations  of  it  produced  generally,  gave  a  mistranslation  of  a 
single  word,  which  entirely  perverted  its  meaning,  and  made  it 
a  pliant  and  fertile  text  of  misrepresentation  of  my  political  prin- 
ciples. The  original,  speaking  of  an  Anglican,  monarchical  and 
aristocratical  party,  which  had  sprung  up  since  he  had  left  us, 
states  their  object  to  be  "  to  /draw  over  us  the  substance,  as  they 
had  already  done  the  forms  of  the  British  Government."  Now  the 
"  forms  "  here  meant,  were  the  levees,  birthdays,  the  pompous 
cavalcade  to  the  state  house  on  the  meeting  of  Congress,  the 
formal  speech  from  the  throne,  the  procession  of  Congress  in  a 
body  to  re-echo  the  speech  in  an  answer,  &c.,  &c.  But  the 
translator  here,  by  substituting  form  in  the  singular  number,  for 
forms  in  the  plural,  made  it  mean  the  frame  or  organization  of 
our  government,  or  its  form  of  legislative,  executive  and  judiciary 
authorities,  coordinate  and  independent ;  to  which  form  it  was 


OOKRESPONDENOE.  367 

to  be  inferred  that  I  was  an  enemy.  In  this  sense  they  always 
quoted  it,  and  in  this  sense  Mr.  Pickering  still  quotes  it,  pages  34, 
35,  38,  and  countenances  the  inference.  Now  General  Wash- 
ington perfectly  understood  what  I  meant  by  these  forms,  as  they 
were  i'requent  subjects  of  conversation  between  us.  When,  on 
my  return  from  Europe,  I  joined  the  government  in  March,  1790, 
at  New  York,  I  was  much  astonished,  indeed,  at  the  mimicry  I 
found  established  of  roya)  forms  and  ceremonies,  and  more  alarmed 
at  the  unexpected  phenomenon,  by  the  monarchical  sentiments  I 
heard  expressed  and  openly  maintained  in  every  company,  and 
among  others  by  the  high  members  of  the  government,  executive 
and  judiciary,  (General  Washington  alone  excepted,)  and  by  a 
great  part  of  the  legislature,  save  only  some  members  who  had 
been  of  the  old  Congress,  and  a  very  few  of  recent  introduction. 
I  took  occasion,  at  various  times,  of  expressing  to  General  Wash- 
ington my  disappointment  at  these  symptoms  of  a  change  of 
principle,  and  that  I  thought  them  encouraged  by  the  forms  and 
ceremonies  which  I  found  prevailing,  not  at  all  in  character  with 
the  simplicity  of  republican  government,  and  looking  as  if  wish- 
fully to  those  of  European  courts.  His  general  explanations  to 
me  were,  that  when  he  arrived  at  New  York  to  enter  on  the  ex- 
ecutive administration  of  the  new  government,  he  observed  to 
those  who  were  to  assist  him,  that  placed  as  he  was  in  an  office 
entirely  new  to  him,  unacquainted  with  the  forms  and  ceremo- 
nies of  other  governments,  still  less  apprized  of  those  which 
might  be  properly  established  here,  and  himself  perfectly  indiffer- 
ent to  all  forms,  he  wished  them  to  consider  and  prescribe  what 
they  should  be  ;  and  the  task  was  assigned  particularly  to  Gen- 
eral Knox,  a  man  of  parade,  and  to  Colonel  Humphreys,  who 
had  resided  some  time  at  a  foreign  court.  They,  he  said,  were 
the  authors  of  the  present  regulations,  and  that  others  were  pro- 
posed so  highly  strained  that  he  absolutely  rejected  them.  At- 
tentive to  the  difference  of  opinion  pre  trailing  on  this  subject, 
when  the  term  of  his  second  election  arrived,  he  called  the  Heads 
of  departments  together,  observed  to  them  the  situation  in  which 
be  had  been  at  the  commencement  of  the  government,  the  ad- 


S68  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

vice  he  had  taken  and  the  course  he  had  observed  in  comphance 
with  it ;  that  a  proper  occasion  had  now  arrived  of  revising  that 
course,  of  correcting  it  in  any  particulars  not  approved  in  expe- 
rience ;  and  he  desired  us  to  consult  together,  agree  on  any 
changes  we  should  think  for  the  better,  and  that  he  should  will- 
ingly conform  to  what  we  should  advise.  We  met  at  my  office. 
Hamilton  and  myself  agreed  at  once  that  there  was  too  much 
ceremony  for  the  character  of  our  government,  and  particularly, 
that  the  parade  of  the  installation  at  New  York  ought  not  to  be 
copied  on  the  present  occasion,  that  the  President  should  desire 
the  Chief  Justice  to  attend  him  at  his  chambers,  that  he  should 
administer  the  oath  of  office  to  him  in  the  presence  of  the  higher 
officers  of  the  government,  and  that  the  certificate  of  the  fact 
should  be  delivered  to  the  Secretary  of  State  to  be  recorded. 
Randolph  and  Knox  differed  from  us,  the  latter  vehemently ; 
they  thought  it  not  advisable  to  change  any  of  the  established 
forms,  and  we  authorized  Randolph  to  report  our  opinions  to  the 
President.  As  these  opinions  were  divided,  and  no  positive  ad- 
vice given  as  to  any  change,  no  change  was  made.  Thus  the 
forms  which  I  had  censured  in  my  letter  to  Mazzei  were  per- 
fectly understood  by  General  Washington,  and  were  those  which 
he  himself  but  barely  tolerated.  He  had  furnished  me  a  proper 
occasion  for  proposing  their  reformation,  and  my  opinion  not  pre- 
vailing, he  knew  I  could  not  have  meant  any  part  of  the  censure 
for  him. 

Mr.  Pickering  quotes,  too,  (page  34)  the  expression  in  the 
letter,  of  "  the  men  who  were  Samsons  in  the  field,  and  Solo- 
mons in  the  council,  but  who  had  had  their  heads  shorn  by  the 
harlot  England ;"  or,  as  expressed  in  their  re-translation,  "  the 
men  who  were  Solomons  in  council,  and  Samsons  in  combat,  but 
whose  hair  had  been  cut  off  by  the  whore  England."  Now  this 
expression  also  was  perfectly  understood  by  General  Washing- 
ton. He  knew  that  I  meant  it  for  the  Cincinnati  generally,  and 
that  from  what  had  passed  between  us  at  the  commencement  of 
that  institution,  I  could  not  mean  to  include  him.  When  the 
first  meeting  was  called  for  its  establishment,  I  was  a  member  o^ 


CORRESPONDENCE.  869 

tne  Congress  chen  sitting  at  Annapolis.  General  Washington 
wrote  to  me,  asking  my  opinion  on  thit  proposition,  and  the 
course,  if  any,  which  I  thought  Congress  would  observe  respect- 
ing it.  I  wrote  him  frankly  my  own  disapprobation  of  it ;  that 
1  found  the  members  of  Congress  generally  in  the  same  senti- 
ment ;  that  I  thought  they  would  take  no  express  notice  of  it, 
but  that  in  all  appointments  of  trust,  honor,  or  profit,  they  would 
silently  pass  by  all  candidates  of  that  order,  and  give  an  uniform 
preference  to  others.  On  his  way  to  the  first  meeting  in  Phil- 
adelphia, which  I  think  was  in  the  spring  of  1784,  he  called  on 
me  at  Annapolis.  It  was  a  little  after  candle-light,  and  he  sat 
with  me  till  after  midnight,  conversing,  almost  exclusively,  on 
that  subject.  While  he  was  feelingly  indulgent  to  the  motives 
which  might  induce  the  officers  to  promote  it,  he  concurred  with 
me  entirely  in  condemning  it ;  and  when  I  expressed  an  idea 
that  if  the  hereditary  quality  were  suppressed,  the  institution 
might  perhaps  be  indidged  during  the  lives  of  the  officers  now 
living,  and  who  had  actually  served  ;  "  no,"  he  said,  "  not  a  fibre 
of  it  ought  to  be  left,  to  be  an  ej'e-sore  to  the  public,  a  ground 
of  dissatisfaction,  and  a  Ime  of  separation  between  them  and  their 
country ;"  and  he  left  me  with  a  determination  to  use  all  his  in- 
fluence for  its  entire  suppression.  On  his  return  from  the  meet- 
ing he  called  on  me  again,  and  related  to  me  the  course  the  thing 
had  taken.  He  said  that  from  the  beginning,  he  had  used  every 
endeavor  to  prevail  on  the  officers  to  renounce  the  project  alto- 
gether, urging  the  many  considerations  which  would  render  it 
odious  to  their  fellow  citizens,  and  disreputable  and  injurious  to 
themselves  ;  that  he  had  at  length  prevailed  on  most  of  the  old 
officers  to  reject  it,  although  with  great  and  warm  opposition 
from  others,  and  especially  the  younger  ones,  among  whom  he 
named  Colonel  W.  S.  Smith  as  particularly  intemperate.  But 
that  in  this  state  of  things,  when  he  thought  the  question  safe, 
and  the  meeting  drawing  to  a  close.  Major  L'Enfant  arrived  from 
France,  with  a  bundle  of  eagles,  for  which  he  had  been  sent 
there,  with  letters  from  the  French  officers  who  had  sei-ved  in 
America,  praying  for  admission  into  the  order,  and  a  solemn  act 

VOL.  VIL  24 


370  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

of  their  king  permitting  them  to  wear  its  ensign.  This,  he  said, 
changed  the  face  of  matters  at  once,  produced  an  entire  revolu- 
liou  of  sentiment,  and  turned  the  torrent  so  strongly  in  an  oppo- 
site direction  that  it  could  be  no  longer  withstood  ;  all  he  conld 
then  obtain  was  a  suppression  of  the  hereditary  quality.  He 
added,  that  it  was  the  French  applications,  and  respect  for  the 
approbation  of  the  king,  which  saved  the  establishment  in  its 
modified  and  temporary  form.  Disapproving  thus  of  the  insti- 
tution as  much  as  I  did,  and  conscious  that  I  knew  him  to  do  so, 
he  could  never  suppose  that  I  meant  to  include  him  among  the 
Samsons  in  the  field,  whose  object  was  to  draw  over  us  the  form, 
as  they  made  the  letter  say,  of  the  British  government,  and  espe- 
cially its  aristocratic- member,  an  hereditary  house  of  lords.  Add 
to  this,  that  the  letter  saying  "  that  two  out  of  the  three  branches 
of  legislature  were  against  us,"  was  an  obvious  exception  of  him  ; 
it  being  well  known  that  the  majorities  in  the  two  branches  of 
Senate  and  Representatives,  were  the  very  instruments  which 
carried,  in  opposition  to  the  old  and  real  republicans,  the  meas- 
ures which  were  the  subjects  of  condemnation  in  this  letter, 
Genera]  Washington  then,  understanding  perfectly  what  and 
whom  I  meant  to  designate,  in  both  phrases,  and  that  they  could 
not  have  any  application  or  view  to  himself,  could  find  in  neither 
any  cause  of  offence  to  himself ;  and  therefore  neither  needed, 
nor  ever  asked  any  explanation  of  them  from  me.  Had  it  even 
been  otherwise,  they  must  know  very  little  of  General  Washing- 
ton, who  should  believe  to  be  within  the  laws  of  his  character 
what  Doctor  Stuart  is  said  to  have  imputed  to  him.  Be  this, 
however,  as  it  may,  the  story  is  infamously  false  in  every  article 
of  it.  My  last  parting  with  General  Washington  was  at  the  in- 
auguration of  Mr.  Adams,  in  March,  1797,  and  was  warmly  affec- 
tionate ;  and  I  never  had  any  reason  to  believe  any  change  on 
his  part,  as  there  certainly  was  none  on  mine.  But  one  session 
of  Congress  intervened  between  that  and  his  death,  the  year 
following,  in  my  passage  to  and  from  which,  as  it  happened  to 
be  not  convenient  to  call  on  him,  I  never  had  another  oppor- 
tunity ;  and  as  to  the  cessation  of  correspondence  observed  dur- 


OOERESPONDENOE.  371 

mg  that  short  interval,  no  particular  circumstance  occurred  for 
epistolary  communication,  and  both  of  us  were  too  much  opt- 
pressed  with  letter-writing,  to  trouble,  either  the  other,  with  a 
letter  about  nothing. 

The  truth  is,  that  the  federalists,  pretending  to  be  the  exclu- 
sive friends  of  General  Washington,  have  ever  done  what  they 
could  to  sink  his  character,  by  hanging  theirs  on  it,  and  by  rep- 
resenting as  the  enemy  of  republicans  him,  who,  of  all  men,  is 
best  entitled  to  the  appellation  of  the  father  of  that  republic  Avhich 
they  were  endeavoring  to  subvert,  and  the  republicans  to  main- 
tain. They  cannot  deny,  because  the  elections  proclaimed  the 
truth,  that  the  great  body  of  the  nation  approved  the  republican 
measures.  General  Washington  was  himself  sincerely  a  friend 
to  the  republican  principles  of  our  constitution.  His  faith,  per- 
haps, in  its  duration,  might  not  have  been  as  confident  as  mine  ; 
but  he  repeatedly  declared  to  me,  that  he  was  determined  it 
should  have  a  fair  chance  for  success,  and  that  he  would  lose  ' 
the  last  drop  of  his  blood  in  its  support,  against  any  attempt 
which  might  be  made  to  change  it  from  its  republican  form.  He 
made  these  declarations  the  oftener,  liecausc  he  knew  my  sus- 
picions that  Hamilton  had  other  views,  and  he  wished  to  quiet 
my  jealousies  on  this  subject.  For  Hamilton  frankly  avowed, 
that  he  considered  the  British  constitution,  with  all  the  corrup- 
tions of  its  administration,  as  the  most  perfect  model  of  govern- 
ment which  had  ever  been  devised  l)y  the  wit  of  man ;  profess- 
ing however,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  spirit  of  this  country 
was  so  fundamentally  republican,  that  it  would  be  visionary  to 
think  of  introducing  monarchy  here,  and  that,  therefore,  it  was 
the  duty  of  its  administrators  to  conduct  it  on  the  principles  their 
constituents  had  elected. 

General  Washington,  after  the  retirement  of  his  first  cabinet, 
and  the  composition  of  his  second,  entirely  federal,  and  at  the 
head  of  which  was  Mr.  Pickering  himself,  had  no  opportunity  of 
hearmg  both  sides  of  any  question.  His  measures,  consequently, 
took  more  the  hue  of  the  party  in  whose  hands  he  was.  These 
measures  were  certainly  not  approved  by  the  republicans ;  vet 


S72  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

were  they  not  imputed  to  him,  but  to  the  counsellors  around  him ; 
and  his  prudence  so  far  restrained  their  impassioned  course  and 
bias,  that  no  act  of  strong  mark,  during  the  remainder  of  his  ad- 
ministration, excited  much  dissatisfaction.  He  lived  too  short  a 
time  after,  and  too  much  withdrawn  from  information,  to  correct 
the  views  into  which  he  had  been  deluded  ;  and  the  continued  as- 
siduities of  the  party  drew  him  into  the  vortex  of  their  intemper- 
ate career ;  separated  him  still  farther  from  his  real  friends,  and 
excited  him  to  actions  and  expressions  of  dissatisfaction,  which 
grieved  them,  but  could  not  loosen  their  affections  from  him. 
They  would  not  suffer  the  temporary  aberration  to  weigh  against 
the  immeasurable  merits  of  his  life  ;  and  although  they  tumbled 
his  seducers  from  their  places,  they  preserved  his  memory  em- 
balmed in  their  hearts,  with  undiminished  love  and  devotion ;  and 
there  it  forever  will  remain  embalmed,  in  entire  oblivion  of  every 
temporary  thing  which  might  cloud  the  glories  of  his  splendid  life. 
It  is  vain,  then,  for  Mr.  Pickering  and  his  friends  to  endeavor  to 
falsify  his  character,  by  representing  him  as  an  enemy  to  repub- 
licans and  republican  principles,  and  as  exclusively  the  friend  of 
those  who  were  so  ;  and  had  he  lived  longer,  he  would  have  re- 
turned to  his  ancient  and  unbiased  opinions,  would  have  re- 
placed his  confidence  in  those  whom  the  people  approved  and 
supported,  and  would  have  seen  that  they  were  only  restoring 
and  acting  on  the  principles  of  his  own  first  administration. 

I  find,  my  dear  Sir,  that  I  have  written  you  a  very  long  letter, 
or  rather  a  history.  The  civility  of  having  sent  me  a  copy  of 
Mr.  Pickering's  diatribe,  would  scarcely  justify  its  address  to  you. 
I  do  not  publish  these  things,  because  my  rule  of  life  has  been 
never  to  harass  the  public  with  fendings  and  provings  of  personal 
slanders ;  and  least  of  all  would  I  descend  into  the  arena  of  slan- 
der with  such  a  champion  as  Mr.  Pickering.  I  have  ever  trusted 
to  the  justice  and  consideration  of  my  fellow  citizens,  and  have 
no  reason  to  repent  it,  or  to  change  my  course.  At  this  time  of 
life  too,  tranquillity  is  the  summum  bonum.  But  although  I  de- 
cline all  newspaper  controversy,  yet  when  falsehoods  have  been 
advanced,  within  the  knowledge  of  no  one  so  much  as  myself,,! 


COERESPONDENOE.  373 

have  sometimes  deposited  a  contradiction  in  the  hands  of  a  friend, 
which,  if  worth  preservation,  may,  when  I  am  no  more,  not 
those  whom  I  might  offend,  throw  light  on  history,  and  recall 
that  into  the  path  of  truth.  And  if  of  no  other  value,  the  present 
communication  may  amuse  you  with  anecdotes  not  known  t.> 
every  one. 

I  had  meant  to  have  added  some  views  on  the  amalgamation  of 
parties,  to  which  your  favor  of  the  8th  has  some  allusion  ;  an  amal- 
gamation of  name,  but  not  of  principle.  Tories  are  tories  still,  by 
whatever  name  they  may  be  called.  But  my  letter  is  already 
too  unmercifully  long,  and  I  close  it  here  with  assurances  of  my 
great  esteem  and  respectful  consideration. 


TO    MK.    MADISON. 

MoNTTUKI.LO,  Julv    14,    1824. 

Dear  Sir, — ^I  have  attentively  read  your  letter  to  Mr.  Wheaton 
on  the  question  whether,  at  the  date  of  the  message  to  Congress 
recommending  the  embargo  of  1807,  we  had  knowledge  of  the 
order  of  council  of  November  1 1th  ;  and  according  to  your  re- 
quest I  have  resorted  to  my  papers,  as  well  as  my  memory,  for 
the  testimony  these  might  afford  additional  to  yours.  There  is 
no  fact  in  the  course  of  my  life  which  I  recollect  more  strongly, 
than  that  of  my  being  at  the  date  of  the  message  in  possession 
of  an  English  newspaper  containing  a  copy  of  the  proclamation. 
I  am  almost  certain,  too,  that  it  was  under  the  ordinary  authenti- 
cation of  the  government  ;  and  between  November  11th  and  De- 
cember 17th,  there  was  time  enough  (thirty-five  days)  to  admit 
the  receipt  of  such  a  paper,  which  I  think  came  to  me  through  a 
private  channel,  probably  put  on  board  some  vessel  about  sailing, 
the  moment  it  appeared. 

Turning  to  my  papers,  I  find  that  I  had  prepared  a  first  draught 
of  a  message  in  which  was  this  paragraph  :  "  The  British  regu- 
lations had  before  reduced  us  to  a  direct  voyage,  to  a  single  port 
of  their  enemies,  and  it  is  now  believed  they  will   interdict  all 


374  JEFFERSON'S    "WORKS. 

commerce  whatever  with  them.  A  proclamation,  too,  of  that  gov- 
ernment of (not  officially  indeed  communicated  to  us,  yet  so 

given  out  to  the  public  as  to  become  a  rule  of  action  with  them,) 
seems  to  have  shut  the  door  on  all  negotiation  with  us  except  as 
to  the  single  aggression  on  the  Chesapeake."  You,  however, 
suggested  a  substitute  (which  I  have  now  before  me,  written 
with  a  pencil  and)  which,  with  some  unimportant  amendments, 
I  preferred  to  my  own,  and  was  the  one  I  sent  to  Congress.  It 
was  in  these  words,  "  the   communications  now  made,  showing 

the  great  and  increasing  dangers  with  which  seamen,  (fcc, 

ports  of  the  United  States."  This  shows  that  we  communicated 
to  them  papers  of  information  on  the  subject ;  and  as  it  was  our 
interest,  and  our  duty,  to  give  them  the  strongest  information  we 
jiossessed  to  justify  our  opinion  and  their  action  on  it,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  we  sent  them  this  identical  paper.  For  what  stronger 
could  we  send  them  ?  I  am  the  more  strengthened  in  the  belief 
that  we  did  send  it,  from  the  fact,  which  the  newspapers  of  the 
day  will  prove,  that  in  the  reprobations  of  the  measure  published 
in  them  by  its  enemies,  they  indulged  themselves  in  severe  criti- 
cisms on  our  having  considered  a  newspaper  as  a  proper  docu- 
ment to  lay  before  Congress,  and  a  sufficient  foundation  for  so 
serious  a  measure  ;  and  considering  this  as  no  sufficient  information 
of  the  fact,  they  continued  perseveringly  to  deny  that  we  had 
knowledge  of  the  order  of  council  when  we  recommended  the 
embargo  ;  admitting,  because  they  could  not  deny,  the  existence 
of  the  order,  they-  insisted  only  on  our  supposed  ignorance  of  it 
as  furnishing  them  a  ground  of  crimination.  But  I  had  no  idea 
that  this  gratuitous  charge  was  believed  by  any  one  at  this  day. 
In  addition  to  our  testimony,  I  am  sure  Mr.  Gallatin,  General 
Dearborne  and  Mr.  Smith,  will  recollect  that  we  possessed  the 
newspaper,  and  acted  on  a  view  of  the  proclamation  it  contained. 
If  you  think  this  statement  can  add  anything  in  corroboration  of 
yours,  make  what  use  you  please  of  it.  and  accept  assuranccL'  of 
my  constant  affection  and  respect. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  375 


TO    MR.    LEWIS    E.    BECK,    ALBANY. 

I  thank  you,  Sir,  for  your  pamphlet  on  the  climate  of  the  west, 
and  have  read  it  with  great  satisfaction.  Although  it  does  not 
yet  establish  a  satisfactory  theory,  it  is  an  additional  step  towards 
it.  Mine  was  perhaps  the  first  attempt,  not  to  form  a  theory,  but 
to  bring  together  the  few  facts  then  known,  and  suggest  them  to 
public  attention.  They  were  written  between  forty  and  fifty 
years  ago,  before  the  close  of  the  revolutionary  war,  when  the 
western  country  was  a  wilderness,  untrodden  but  by  the  foot  of 
the  savage  or  the  hunter.  It  is  now  flourishing  in  population 
and  science,  and  after  a  few  years  more  of  observation  and  col- 
lection of  facts,  they  will  doubtless  furnish  a  theory  of  solid 
foundation.  Years  are  requisite  for  this,  steady  attention  to  the 
thermometer,  to  the  plants  growing  there,  the  times  of  their  leaf- 
ing and  flowering,  its  animal  inhabitants,  beasts,  birds,  reptiles 
and  insects  ;  its  prevalent  winds,  quantities  of  rain  and  snow, 
temperature  of  fountains,  and  other  indexes  of  climate.  We 
want  this  indeed  for  all  the  States,  and  the  work  should  be  re- 
peated once  or  twice  in  a  century,  to  show  the  effect  of  clearing 
and  culture  towards  changes  of  climate.  My  Notes  give  a  very 
imperfect  idea  of  what  our  climate  was,  half  a  century  ago,  at 
this  place,  which  being  nearly  central  to  the  State  may  be  taken 
for  its  medium.  Latterly,  after  seven  years  of  close  and  exact 
observation,  I  have  prepared  an  estimate  of  what  it  is  now,  which 
may  some  day  be  added  to  the  former  work  ;  and  I  hope  some- 
thing like  this  is  doing  in  the  other  States,  which,  when  all 
shall  be  brought  together,  may  produce  theories  meriting  con- 
fidence. I  trust  that  yourself  will  not  be  inattentive  to  this  ser- 
vice, and  that  to  that  of  the  present  epoch  you  may  be  able  to 
add  a  second  at  the  distance  of  another  half  century.  With  this 
wish  accept  the  assurance  of  my  respectful  consideration. 


376  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS, 


TO    H.   LEE. 

MoNTJOELi-o,  August  10,  1824. 

SsR, — 1  have  duly  received  y  )ur  favor  of  the  14th,  and  with 
it  the  prospectus  of  a  newspaper  which  it  covered.  If  the  style 
and  spirit  of  that  should  be  maintained  in  the  paper  itself,  it  will 
be  truly  worthy  of  the  public  patronage.  As  to  myself,  it  is  many 
years  since  I  have  ceased  to  read  but  a  single  paper.  I  am  no 
longer,  therefore,  a  general  subscriber  for  any  other.  Yet,  to  en- 
courage the  hopeful  in  the  outset,  I  have  sometimes  subscribed 
for  the  first  year  on  condition  of  being  discontinued  at  the  end 
of  it,  without  further  warning.  I  do  the  same  now  with  pleasure 
for  yours;  and  unwilling  to  have  outstanding  accounts,  which  I 
am  liable  to  forget,  I  now  enclose  the  price  of  the  tri-weekly  pa- 
per. I  am  no  believer  in  the  amalgamation  of  parties,  nor  do  I 
consider  it  as  either  desirable  or  useful  for  the  public ;  but  only 
that,  like  religious  differences,  a  difference  in  politics  should  never 
be  permitted  to  enter  into  social  intercourse,  or  to  disturb  its 
friendships,  its  charities,  or  justice.  In  that  form,  they  are  cen- 
sors of  the  conduct  of  each  other,  and  useful  watchmen  for  the 
public.  Men  by  their  constitutions  are  naturally  divided  into 
two  parties :  1.  Those  who  fear  and  distrust  tne  people,  and 
wish  to  draw  all  powers  from  them  into  the  hands  of  the  higher 
classes.  2.  Those  who  identify  themselves  with  the  people, 
have  confidence  in  them,  cherish  and  consider  them  as  the  most 
honest  and  safe,  although  not  ihe  most  wise  depository  of  the 
public  interests.  In  every  country  these  two  parties  exist,  aad 
in  every  one  where  they  are  free  to  think,  speak,  and  write,  they 
will  declare  themselves.  Call  thein,  therefore,  liberals  and  sor- 
viles,  Jacobins  and  ultras,  whigs  and  tories,  republicans  and  fed- 
eralists, aristocrats  and  democrats,  or  by  whatever  name  you 
please,  they  are  the  same  parties  still,  and  pursue  the  same  ob- 
ject. The  last  appellation  of  aristocrats  and  democrats  is  the 
true  one  expressing  the  essence  of  all.  A  paper  which  shall  be 
governed  by  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Madison's  celebrated  report,  of 
which  you  express  in  your  prospectus  so  just  and  high  an  appro- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  377 

bation,  cannot  be  false  to  the  rights  of  all  classes.  The  grand- 
fathers of  the  present  generation  of  your  family  I  knew  well. 
They  were  friends  and  fellow  laborers  with  me  in  the  same  cause 
and  principle.  Their  descendants  cannot  follow  better  guides. 
Accept  the  assurance  of  my  best  wishes  and  respectful  considera- 
tion. 


TO    MB     WM.    LUDLOW. 

Mt).\TiuKLLo.  September  6    1824. 

Sir, — The  idea  which  you  present  in  your  letter  of  July  30th, 
of  the  progress  of  society  from  its  rudest  state  to  that  it  has  now 
attained,  seems  conformable  to  what  may  be  probably  conjec- 
tured. Indeed,  we  have  under  our  eyes  tolerable  proofs  of  it. 
Let  a  philosophic  observer  commence  a  journey  from  the  savages 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  eastwardly  towards  our  sea-coast. 
These  he  would  observe  in  the  earliest  stage  of  association  living 
under  no  law  but  that  of  nature,  subscribing  and  covering  them- 
selves with  the  flesh  and  skins  of  wild  beasts.  He  would  next 
find  those  on  our  frontiers  in  the  pastoral  state,  raising  domestic 
animals  to  supply  the  defects  of  hunting.  Then  succeed  our 
own  semi-barbarous  citizens,  the  pioneers  of  the  advance  of  civ- 
ilization, and  so  in  his  progress  he  would  meet  the  gradual  shades 
of  improving  man  until  he  would  reach  his,  as  yet,  most  improv- 
ed state  in  our  seaport  towns.  This,  in  fact,  is  equivalent  to  a 
survey,  in  time,  of  the  progress  of  man  from  the  infancy  of  crea- 
tion to  the  present  day.  I  am  eighty-one  years  of  age,  born 
where  I  now  live,  in  the  first  range  of  mountains  in  the  interior 
of  our  country.  And  I  have  observed  this  march  of  civilization 
advancing  from  the  sea  coast,  passing  over  us  like  a  cloud  of 
light,  increasing  our  knowledge  and  improving  our  condition,  in- 
somuch as  that  we  are  at  this  time  more  advanced  in  civilization 
here  than  the  seaports  were  when  I  was  a  boy.  And  where  this 
orogress  wD.l  stop  no  one  can  say.  Barbarism  has,  in  tlie  mean- 
time, been  receding  before  the  steady  step  of  amelioration ;  and 
will  in  time,  I  trust,  disappear  from  the  earth.     You  soem  tc 


378  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

think  that  this  advance  has  brought  on  too  complicated  a  state 
of  society,  and  that  we  should  gain  in  happiness  by  treading 
back  our  steps  a  little  way.  I  think,  myself,  that  we  have  more 
niachiLiery  of  government  than  is  necessary,  too  many  parasites 
living  on  the  labor  of  the  industrious.  I  believe  it  might  be 
much  simplified  to  the  relief  of  those  who  maintain  it.  Your 
experiment  seems  to  have  this  in  view.  A  society  of  seventy 
families,  the  number  you  name,  may  very  possibly  be  governed 
as  a  single  family,  subsisting  on  their  common  industry,  and 
holding  all  things  in  common.  Some  regulators  of  the  family 
you  still  must  have,  and  it  remains  to  be  seen  at  what  period  of 
your  increasing  population  your  simple  regidations  will  cease  to 
be  sufficient  to  preserve  order,  peace,  and  justice.  The  experi- 
ment is  interesting  ;  I  shall  not  live  to  see  its  issue,  but  I  wish  it 
success  equal  to  your  hopes,  and  to  yourself  and  society  prosper- 
ity and  happiness. 


TO    GENERAL    LA    TATETTE. 

MoN'riuELLo,  October  9,  1824. 

I  hare  duly  received,  my  dear  friend  and  General,  your  letter 
of  the  1st  from  Philadelphia,  giving  us  the  welcome  assurance 
that  you  will  visit  the  neighborhood  which,  during  the  march  of 
our  enemy  near  it,  was  covered  by  your  shield  from  his  robberies 
and  ravages.  In  passing  the  line  of  your  former  march  you  will 
experience  pleasing  recollections  of  the  good  you  have  done.  My 
neighbors,  too,  of  our  academical  village,  who  well  remember 
their  obligations  to  you,  have  expressed  to  you,  in  a  letter  from  a 
''ommittee  appointed  for  that  purpose,  their  hope  that  you  will 
accept  manifestations  of  their  feelings,  simple  indeed,  but  as  cor- 
dial as  any  you  will  have  received.  It  will  be  an  additional 
honor  to  the  University  of  the  State  that  you  will  have  been  its 
first  guest.  Gratify  them,  then,  by  this  assurance  to  their  com- 
mittee, if  it  has  not  been  done.  But  what  recollections,  dear 
friend,  will  this  call  up  to  you  and  me !     What  a  history  have 


COERESPONDENOE.  379 

we  to  run  over  from  the  evening  that  yourself,  Mousnier,  Ber- 
nau,  and  other  patriots  settled,  in  my  house  in  Paris,  the  outlines 
of  the  constitution  you  wished  !  And  to  trace  it  through  all  the 
disastrous  chapters  of  Robespierre,  Barras,  Bonaparte,  and  the 
Bourbons!  These  things,  however,  are  for  our  meeting.  You 
mention  the  return  of  Miss  Wright  to  America,  accompanied  by 
her  sister;  but  do  not  say  what  her'  stay  is  to  be,  nor  what  her 
course.  Should  it  lead  her  to  a  visit  of  our  University,  which, 
in  its  architecture  only,  is  as  yet  an  object,  herself  and  her  com- 
panion will  nowhere  find  a  welcome  more  hearty  than  with  Mrs. 
Randolph,  and  all  the  inhabitants  of  Monticello.  This  Athenajum 
of  our  country,  in  embryo,  is  as  yet  but  promise ;  and  not  in  a 
state  to  recall  the  recollections  of  Athens.  But  everything  has 
its  beginning,  its  growth,  and  end;  and  who  knows  with  what 
future  delicious  morsels  of  philosophy,  and  by  what  future  Miss 
Wright  raked  from  its  ruins,  the  world  may,  some  day,  be  grati- 
fied and  instructed  ?  Your  son  George  wo  shall  be  very  happy 
indeed  to  see,  and  to  renew  in  him  the  recollections  of  your 
very  dear  family ;  and  the  revolutionary  merit  of  M.  le  Vasseur 
has  that  passport  to  the  esteem  of  every  American,  and,  to  me, 
the  additional  one  of  having  been  your  friend  and  co-operator, 
and  he  will,  I  hope,  join  you  in  making  head-quarters  with  us  at 
Monticello.  But  all  these  things  a  revoir,  in  the  meantime  we 
are  impatient  that  your  ceremonies  at  York  should  be  over,  and 
give  you  to  the  embraces  of  friendship. 

P.  S.  Will  you  come  by  Mr.  Madison's,  or  let  him  or  me  know 
on  what  day  he  may  meet  you  here,  and  join  us  in  our  greet- 
ings? 


TO    MR.    RUSH. 

Monticello,  October  13,  1824. 

Dear  Sir, — I  must  again  beg  the  protection  of  your  cover  fox 
a  letter  to  Mr.  Gilmer ;  although  a  httle  doubtful  whether  he  may 
not  have  left  you. 


380  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

You  will  have  seen  by  our  papers  the  delirium  into  which  our 
citizens  are  thrown  by  a  visit  from  General  La  Fayette.  He  is 
making  a  triumphant  progress  through  the  States,  from  town  to 
town,  with  acclamations  of  welcome,  such  as  no  crowned  head 
ever  received.  It  will  have  a  good  effect  in  favor  of  the  General 
with  the  people  in  Europe,  but  probably  a  different  one  with 
their  sovereigns.  Its  effect  here,  too,  will  be  salutary  as  to  our- 
selves, by  rallying  us  together  and  strengthening  the  habit  of 
considering  oiar  country  as  one  and  indivisible,  and  I  hope  we 
shall  close  it  with  something  more  solid  for  him  than  dinners 
and  balls.  The  eclat  of  this  visit  has  almost  merged  the  Presi- 
dential question,  on  which  nothing  scarcely  is  said  in  our  pa- 
pers. That  question  will  lie  ultimately  between  Crawford  and 
Adams ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  the  vote  of  the  people  will  be  so 
distracted  by  subordinate  candidates,  that  possibly  they  may 
make  no  election,  and  let  it  go  to  the  House  of  Representatives. 
There,  it  is  thought,  Crawford's  chance  is  best.  We  have  nothing 
else  interesting  before  the  public.  Of  the  two  questions  of  the 
tariff  and  public  improvements,  the  former,  perhaps,  is  not  yet  at 
rest,  and  the  latter  will  excite  boisterous  discussions.  It  happens 
that  both  these  measures  fall  in  with  the  western  interests,  and 
it  is  their  secession  from  the  agricultural  States  which  gives  such 
strength  to  the  manufacturing  and  consolidating  parties,  on  these 
two  questions.  The  latter  is  the  most  dreaded,  because  thought 
to  amount  to  a  determination  in  the  federal  government  to  as- 
sume all  powers  non-enumerated  as  well  as  enumerated  in  the 
constitution,  and  by  giving  a  loose  to  construction,  make  the  text 
say  whatever  will  relieve  them  from  the  bridle  of  the  States. 
These  are  difficulties  for  your  day ;  I  shall  give  them  the  slip. 
Accept  the  assurance  of  my  friendly  attachment  and  great  respect. 


TO    EDWARD    EVERETT. 

MoNTcrELLo,  October  15,  1824. 

Dear  Sir, — I  have  yet  to  thank  lor  your  ">.  C.  K.  oration, de- 
livered in  presence  of  General  La  Fayette.     It  is  all  excellent, 


CORRESPONDENCE.  881 

much  of  il  sublimely  so,  well  worthy  of  its  author  and  his  sub- 
ject, of  whom  we  may  truly  say,  as  was  said  of  Germanicus, 
"fruitur  fama  sui." 

Your  letter  of  September  the  10th  gave  me  the  first  information 
that,  mine  to  Major  Cartwright  had  got  into  the  newspapers ;  and 
the  first  notice,  indeed,  that  he  had  received  it.  I  was  a  stranger 
to  his  person,  but  not  to  his  respectable  and  patriotic  character. 
I  received  from  him  a  long  and  interesting  letter,  and  answered  it 
with  frankness,  going  without  reserve  into  several  subjects,  to 
which  his  letter  had  led,  but  on  which  I  did  not  suppose  I  was 
writing  for  the  newspapers.  The  publication  of  a  letter  in  such 
a  case,  without  the  consent  of  the  writer,  is  not  a  fair  practice. 

The  part  v/hich  you  quote,  may  draw  on  me  the  host  of  judges 
and  divines.  They  may  cavil  but  cannot  refute  it.  Those  who 
read  Prisot's  opinion  with  a  candid  view  to  understand,  and  not 
to  chicane  it,  cannot  mistake  its  meaning.  The  reports  in  the 
Year-books  were  taken  very  short.  The  opinions  of  the  judges 
were  written  down  sententiously,  as  notes  or  memoranda,  and  not 
with  all  the  development  which  they  probably  used  in  delivering 
them.  Prisot's  opinion,  to  be  fully  expressed,  should  be  thus  par- 
aphrased :  "  To  such  laws  as  those  of  holy  church  have  recorded, 
and  preserved  in  their  ancient  books  and  writings,  it  is  proper  for 
us  to  give  credence  ;  for  so  is,  or  so  says  the  common  law,  or  law 
of  the  land,  on  which  all  manner  of  other  laws  rest  for  their  au- 
thority, or  are  founded ;  that  is  to  say,  the  common  law,  or  the 
law  of  the  land  common  to  us  all.  and  established  by  the  authority 
of  us  all,  is  that  from  which  is  derived  the  authority  of  all  other 
special  and  subordinate  branches  of  law,  such  as  the  canon  law, 
law  merchant,  law  maritime,  law  of  Gavelkind,  Borough  English, 
corporation  laws,  local  customs  and  usages,  to  all  of  which  the 
common  law  requires  its  judges  to  permit  authority  in  the  special 
or  local  cases  belonging  to  them.  The  evidence  of  these  laws  is 
preserved  in  their  ancient  treatises,  books  and  writings,  in  like 
manner  as  our  own  common  law  itself  is  known,  the  text  of  its 
original  enactments  having  been  long  lost,  and  its  substance  only 
preserved  in  ancient  and  traditionary  writings.     And  if  it  appears, 


382  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

from  their  ancient  books,  writings  and  records,  that  the  bishop,  in 
this  case,  according  to  the  rules  prescribed  by  these  authorities, 
has  done  what  an  ordinary  would  have  done  in  such  case,  then 
we  should  adjudge  it  good,  otherwise  not."  To  decide  this  ques- 
tion, they  would  have  to  turn  to  the  ancient  writings  and  records 
of  the  canon  law,  in  which  they  would  find  evidence  of  the  laws 
of  advowsons,  quare  impedit,  the  duties  of  bishops  and  ordinaries, 
for  which  terms  Prisot  could  never  have  meant  to  refer  them  to 
the  Old  or  New  Testament,  les  saincts  scriptures,  where  surely 
they  would  not  be  found.  A  license  which  should  permit  "  ancien 
scripture"  to  be  translated  "  holy  scripture,"  annihilates  at  once 
all  the  evidence  of  language.  With  such  a  license,  we  might  re- 
verse the  sixth  commandment  into  "  thou  shalt  not  omit  murder." 
It  would  be  the  more  extraordinary  in  this  case,  where  the  mis- 
translation was  to  effect  the  adoption  of  the  whole  code  of  the 
Jewish  and  Christian  laws  into  the  text  of  our  statutes,  to  con- 
vert religious  offences  into  temporal  crimes,  to  make  the  breach 
of  every  religious  precept  a  subject  of  indictment,  submit  the 
question  of  idolatry,  for  example,  to  the  trial  of  a  jury,  and  to  a 
court,  its  punishment,  to  the  third  and  fourth  generation  of  the 
offender.     Do  we  allow  to  our  judges  this  lumping  legislation? 

The  term  "  common  law,"  although  it  has  more  than  one  mean- 
ing, is  perfectly  definite,  secundu^n  subjectam  materiem.  Its  most 
probable  origin  was  on  the  conquest  of  the  Heptarchy  by  Alfre^, 
and  the  amalgamation  of  their  several  codes  of  law  into  one,  which 
became  common  to  them  all.  The  authentic  text  of  these  enact- 
ments has  not  been  preserved ;  but  their  substance  has  been  com- 
mitted to  many  ancient  books  and  writings,  so  faithfully  as  to  have 
been  deemed  genuine  from  generation  to  generation,  and  obeyed 
as  such  by  all.  We  have  some  fragments  of  them  collected  by 
Lambard,  Wilkins  and  others,  but  abounding  with  proofs  of  their 
spurious  authenticity.  Magna  Charta  is  the  earliest  statute,  the 
text  of  which  has  come  down  to  us  in  an  authentic  form,  and 
thence  downward  we  have  them  entire.  We  do  not  know  exactly 
when  the  common  law  and  statute  law,  the  lex  scripta  et  nan 
scripta,  began  to  be  contra-distinguished,  so  as  to  give  a  second 


CORRESFONDEFOE.  383 

acceptation  to  the  former  term  ;  whether  before,  or  after  Pnsot's 
day,  at  which  time  we  know  that  nearly  two  centuries  and  a  half 
of  statutes  were  in  preservation.  In  later  times,  on  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  chancery  branch  of  law,  the  term  common  law  began 
to  be  used  in  a  third  sense,  as  the  correlative  of  chancery  law. 
This,  hoAvever,  having  been  long  after  Prisot's  time,  could'  not 
have  been  the  sense  in  which  he  used  the  term.  He  must  have 
meant  the  ancient  lex  non  scripta,  because,  had  he  used  it  as  in- 
clusive of  the  lex  scripta,  he  would  have  put  his  finger  on  the 
statute  which  had  enjoined  on  the  judges  a  deference  to  the  laws 
of  holy  church.  But  no  such  statute  existing,  he  must  have  re- 
ferred to  the  common  law  in  the  sense  of  a  lex  non  scripta. 
Whenever,  then,  the  term  common  law  is  used  in  either  of  these 
senses,  and  it  is  never  employed  in  any  other,  it  is  readily  known 
m  which  of  them,  by  the  context  and  subject  matter  imder  con- 
sideration ;  which,  in  the  present  case,  leave  no  room  for  doubt. 

I  do  not  remember  the  occasion  which  led  me  to  take  up  this 
subject,  while  a  practitioner  of  the  law.  But  I  know  I  went  into 
it  with  all  the  research  which  a  very  copious  law  library  enabled 
me  to  indulge  ;  and  I  fear  not  for  the  accuracy  of  any  of  my  quo- 
tations. The  doctrine  might  be  disproved  by  many  other  and 
different  topics  of  reasoning ;  but  having  satisfied  myself  of  the 
origin  of  the  forgery,  and  found  how,  like  a  rolling  snow-ball,  it 
had  gathered  volume,  I  leave  its  further  pursuit  to  those  who 
need  further  proof,  and  perhaps  I  have  already  gone  further  than 
the  feeble  doubt  you  expressed  might  require. 

I  salute  you  with  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO   . 

MoNTicFLi-o,  December  2"2.  1 8"24. 


De.ui  Sir, — The  proposition  to  remove  William  and  Mary  Col- 
hge  to  P^ichmond  with  all  its  present  funds,  and  to  add  to  it  a 
musical  school,  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  to  remove  the  Uni- 
versity also  to  that  place.     Because,  if  both  remain,  there  will 


384.  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

not  be  students  enough  to  make  either  worthy  the  acceptance  of 
men  of  the  first  order  of  science.  They  must  each  fall  down  to 
the  level  of  our  present  academies,  under  the  direction  of  com- 
mon teachers,  and  our  state  of  education  must  stand  exactly  where 
it  now  is.  Few  of  the  States  have  been  able  to  maintain  one 
university,  none  two.  Surely  the  legislature,  after  such  an  ex- 
pense incurred  for  a  real  university,  and  just  as  it  is  prepared  to 
go  into  action  under  hopeful  auspices,  will  not  consent  to  destroy 
it  by  this  side-wind.  As  to  the  best  course  to  be  taken  with 
William  and  Mary,  I  am  not  so  good  a  judge  as  our  colleagues 
on  the  spot.  They  have  under  their  eyes  the  workings  of  the 
enemies  of  the  University,  masked  and  unmasked,  and  the  in- 
trigues of  Richmond,  which,  after  failing  to  obtain  it  in  the  first 
instance,  endeavors  to  steal  its  location  at  this  late  hour.  And 
they  can  best  see  what  measures  are  most  likely  to  counteract 
these  insidious  designs.  On  the  question  of  the  removal,  I  think 
our  particular  friends  had  better  take  no  active  part,  but  vote  si- 
lently for  or  against  it,  according  to  their  own  judgment  as  to 
the  public  utility ;  and  if  they  divide  on  the  question,  so  much 
the  better  perhaps.  I  am  glad  the  visitors  and  professors  have 
invoked  the  interference  of  the  legislature,  because  it  is  an  ac- 
knowledgment of  its  authority  on  behalf  of  the  State  to  super- 
intend and  control  it,  of  Avhich  I  never  had  a  doubt.  It  is  an  in- 
stitution established  for  the  public  good,  and  not  for  the  personal 
emolument  of  the  professors,  endowed  from  the  public  lands  and 
organized  by  the  executive  functionary  whose  legal  office  it  was. 
The  acquiescence  of  both  corporations  under  the  authority  of 
the  legislature,  removes  what  might  otherwise  have  been  a  diffi- 
culty with  some.  If  the  question  of  removal  be  decided  affirm- 
atively, the  next  is,  how  shall  their  funds  be  disposed  of  most 
advantageously  for  the  State  in  general  ?  These  are  about  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars  too  much  for  a  secondary  or  local  in- 
stitution. The  giving  a  part  of  them  to  a  school  at  Winches- 
ter, and  part  to  Hampden  Sidney,  is  well,  as  far  as  it  goes  ;■  but 
does  not  go  far  enough.  Why  should  not  every  part  of  the  State 
participate  equally  of  the  benefit  of  this  reversion  of  right  which 


OORRESPONDENCE.  385. 

accrues  to  the  whole  equally  ?  This  would  be  no  more  a  viola- 
tion of  law  than  the  giving  it  to  a  few.  Yon  know  that  the  Rock- 
fish  report  proposed  an  intermediate  grade  of  schools  between  the 
primary  and  the  university.  In  that  report  the  objects  of  -the 
middle  schools  are  stated.  See  page  10  of  the  copy  I  now  en- 
close you.  In  these  schools  should  be  taught  Latin  and  Greek, 
to  a  good  degree,  French  also,  numerical  arithmetic,  the  elements 
of  geometry,  surveying,  navigation,  geography,  the  use  of  the 
globes,  the  outlines  of  the  solar  system,  and  elements  of  natural 
philosophy.  Two  professors  would  suffice  for  these,  to  wit :  one 
for  languages,  the  other  for  so  much  of  mathematics  and  natural 
philosophy  as  is  here  proposed.  This  degree  of  education  would 
be  adapted  to  the  circumstances  of  a  very  great  number  of  our  citi- 
zens, who,  being  intended  for  lives  of  business,  would  not  aim 
at  an  university  education.  It  would  give  us  a  body  of  yeo- 
manry, too,  of  substantial  information,  well  prepared  to  become 
a  firm  and  steady  support  to  the  government ;  as  schools  of  an- 
cient languages,  too,  they  would  be  preparatories  for  the  Univer- 
sity. 

You  have  now  an  happy  opportunity  of  carrying  this  interme- 
diate establishment  into  execution  without  laying  a  cent  of  tax 
on  the  people,  or  taking  one  from  the  treasury.  Divide  the  State 
into  college  districts  of  about  eighty  miles  square  each.  There 
would  be  about  eight  such  districts  below  the  Alleghany,  and 
two  beyond  it,  which  would  be  necessarily  of  larger  extent  be- 
cause of  the  spai'seness  of  their  population.  The  only  advance 
thtse  colleges  would  call  for,  would  be  for  a  dwelling  house  for 
the  teacher,  of  about  one  thousand  two  hundred  dollars  cost,  and 
a  boarding  house  with  four  or  five  bed  rooms,  and  a  school  room 
for  probably  about  twenty  or  thirty  boys.  The  whole  should 
not  cost  more  than  five  thousand  dollars,  but  the  funds  of  Wil- 
liam and  Mary  would  enable  you  to  give  them  ten  thousand  dol- 
lars each.  The  districts  might  be  so  laid  off  that  the  principal 
towns  and  the  academies  now  existing  might  form  convenient 
sites  for  their  colleges;  as,  for  example,  Wdliamsbuvgh  Rich- 
mond, Fredericksburg,  Hampden  Sidney,  Lynchburg  or  Lexing- 

voL.  VII.  -;o 


386'  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

ton,  Staunton,  Winchester,  &c.  Thus,  of  William  and  Mary; 
you  will  make  ten  colleges,  each  as  useful  as  she  ever  was,  leav- 
ing one  in  Williamsburg  by  itself,  placing  as  good  a  one  within 
a  day's  ride  of  every  man  in  the  State,  and  get  our  whole  scheme 
of  education  completely  established. 

I  have  said  that  no  advance  is  necessary  but  for  the  erection 
of  the  buildings  for  these  schools.  Because  the  boys  sent  to 
them  would  be  exclusively  of  a  class  of  parents  in  competent 
circumstances  to  pay  teachers  for  the  education  of  their  own  chil- 
dren. The  ten  thousand  dollars  given  to  each,  would  afford  a 
surplus  to  maintain  by  its  interest  one  or  two  persons  duly  select- 
ed for  their  genius,  from  the  primary  schools,  of  those  too  poor 
to  proceed  farther  of  their  own  means.  You  will  remember  that 
of  the  three  bills  I  originally  gave  you,  one  was  for  these  district 
colleges,  and  going  into  the  necessary  details.  Will  you  not 
have  every  member  in  favor  of  this  proposition,  except  those 
who  are  for  gobbling  up  the  whole  funds  themselves  ?  The  pres- 
ent professors  might  all  be  employed  in  the  college  of  Richmond 
or  Williamsburg,  or  any  other  they  would  prefer,  with  reasonable 
salaries  in  the  meantime,  until  the  system  should  get  under  way. 
This  occasion  of  completing  our  system  of  education  is  a  God- 
send which  ought  not  to  pass  away  neglected.  Many  may  be 
startled  at  the  first  idea.  But  reflection  on  the  justice  and  ad- 
vantage of  the  measure  will  produce  converts  daily  and  hourly 
to  it.  I  certainly  would  not  propose  that  the  University  should 
claim  a  cent  of  these  funds  in  competition  with  the  district  col- 
leges. 

Would  it  not  be  better  to  say  nothing  about  the  last  donation 
of  fifty  thousand  dollars,  and  endeavor  to  get  the  money  from 
Congress,  and  to  press  for  it  immediately.  I  cannot  doubt  their 
allowing  it,  and  it  would  be  much  better  to  get  it  from  them  than 
to  revive  the  displeasure  of  our  own  legislature. 

You  are  aware  that  we  have  yet  two  professors  vo  appoint,  to 
wit :  of  natural  history  and  moral  philosophy,  and  that  we  have 
no  time  to  lose.  I  propose  that  such  of  our  colleagues  as  are  of 
the  legislature,  should  name  a  day  of  meeting,  convenient  to 


COEEESPONDENOE.  387 

themselves,  and  give  notice  of  it  by  mail  to  Mr.  Madison,  Gen- 
eral Cocke,  and  myself.  But  it  should  not  be  till  the  arrival  of 
the  three  professors  expected  at  Norfolk.  On  their  arrival  only 
can  we  publish  the  day  of  opening.  Our  Richmond  mail-stage 
arrives  here  on  Sunday  and  departs  on  Wednesday,  and  arrives 
again  on  Thursday  and  departs  on  Sunday.  Each  affording  two 
spare  intervening  days,  and  requiring  from  here  an  absence  of 
six  days. 

Mr.  Long;  professor  of  ancient  languages,  is  located  in  his 
apartments  at  the  University.  He  drew,  by  lot,  pavilion  No.  5. 
He  appears  to  be  a  most  amiable  man,  of  fine  understanding, 
well  qualified  for  his  department,  and  acquiring  esteem  as  fast  as 
he  becomes  known.  Indeed,  I  have  great  hope  that  the  whole 
selection  will  fulfil  our  wishes.     Ever  and  afiectionately  yours. 


TO    JOHN    .ADAMS. 

MoNTiCELLO,  January  8,  1825. 

Dear  Sir, — It  is  long  since  I  have  written  to  you.  This  pro- 
ceeds from  the  difficulty  of  writing  with  my  crippled  wrist,  and 
from  an  unwillingness  to  add  to  your  inconveniences  of  either 
reading  by  the  eyes,  or  writing  by  the  hands  of  others.  The 
account  I  receive  of  yom-  physical  situation  afflicts  me  sincerely ; 
but  if  body  or  mind  was  one  of  them  to  give  way,  it  is  a  great 
comfort  that  it  is  the  mind  which  remains  whole,  and  that  its 
vigor,  and  that  of  memory  continues  firm.  Your  hearing,  too,  is 
good,  as  I  am  told.  In  this  you  have  the  advantage  of  me.  The 
dulness  of  mine  makes  me  lose  much  of  the  conversation  of  the 
world,  and  much  a  stranger  to  what  is  passing  in  it.  Acquies- 
cence is  the  only  pillow,  although  not  always  a  soft  one.  I  have 
had  one  advantage  of  you.  This  Presidential  election  has  given 
me  few  anxieties.  With  you  this  must  have  been  impossible, 
independently  of  the  question,  whether  we  are  at  last  to  end  our 
days  under  a  civil  or  a  military  government.  I  am  comforted 
and  protected  from  other  solicitudes  by  the  cares  of  our  Universi- 


388  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

ty.  In  some  departments  of  science  we  believe  Europe  to  be  in 
advance  before  us,  and  that  it  would  advance  ourselves  were  we 
to  draw  from  thence  instructors  in  these  branches,  and  thus  to 
improve  our  science,  as  we  have  done  our  manufactures,  by  bor- 
rowed skill.  I  have  been  much  squibbed  for  this,  perhaps  by 
disappointed  applicants  for  professorships,  to  which  they  were 
deemed  incompetent.  We  wait  only  the  arrival  of  three  of  the 
professors  engaged  in  England,  to  open  our  University. 

I  have  lately  been  reading  the  most  extraordinary  of  all  books, 
and  at  the  same*  time  the  most  demonstrative  by  numerous  and 
unequivocal  facts.  It  is  Flourend's  experiments  on  the  functions 
of  the  nervous  system,  in  vertebrated  animals.  He  takes  out  the 
cerebrum  completely,  leaving  the  cerebellum  and  other  parts  of 
the  system  uninjured.  The  animal  loses  all  its  senses  of  hear- 
ing, seeing,  feeling,  smelling,  tasting,  is  totally  deprived  of  will, 
intelligence,  memory,  perception,  (fcc.  Yet  lives  for  months  in 
perfect  health,  with  all  its  powers  of  motion,  but  without  moving 
but  on  external  excitement,  starving  even  on  a  pile  of  grain,  un- 
less crammed  down  its  throat ;  in  short,  in  a  state  of  the  most  ab- 
solute stupidity.  He  takes  the  cerebellum  out  of  others,  leaving 
the  cerebrum  untouched.  The  animal  retains  all  its  senses,  fac- 
ulties, and  understanding,  but  loses  the  power  of  regulated  mo- 
tion, and  exhibits  all  the  symptoms  of  drunkenness.  While  he 
makes  incisions  in  the  cerebrum  and  cerebellum,  lengthwise  and 
crosswise,  which  heal  and  get  well,  a  puncture  in  the  medulla 
elongata  is  instant  death  ;  and  many  other  most  interesting  things 
too  long  for  a  letter.  Cabanis  had  proved  by  the  anatomical 
structure  of  certain  portions  of  the  human  frame,  that  they  might 
be  capable  of  receiving  from  the  hand  of  the  Creator  the  faculty 
of  thinking  ;  Flourens  proves  that  they  have  received  it;  that  the 
cerebrum  is  the  tliinking  organ ;  and  that  life  and  health  may 
continue,  and  the  animal  be  entirely  without  thought,  if  deprived 
of  that  organ.  I  wish  to  see  what  the  spiritualists  will  say  to 
this.  Whether  in  this  state  the  soul  remains  in  the  body,  de- 
prived of  its  essence  of  thought  ?  or  whether  it  leaves  it,  as  in 
death,  and  where  it  goes  ?     His  memoirs  and  experiments  have 


OORRESPOKDENCa.  339 

been  reported  on  with  approbation  by  a  committee  ol  the  insti- 
tute, composed  of  Cuvier,  Bertholet,  Dumaril,  Portal  and  Pinel. 
But  all  this,  you  and  I  shall  know  better  when  we  meet  again, 
in  another  place,  and  at  no  distant  period.  In  the  meantime, 
that  the  revived  powers  of  your  frame,  and  the  anodyne  of  phi- 
losophy may  preserve  you  from  all  suffering,  is  my  sincere  and 
affectionate  prayer. 


TO    WILLIAM    SHORT,    ESQ. 

MoNi'icKi.Lo,  January  8.  1825. 

Dear  Sir, — I  returned  the  first  volume  of  Hall  by  a  mail  of  a 
week  ago,  and  by  this,  shall  return  the  second.  We  have  kept 
them  long,  but  every  member  of  the  family  wished  to  read  his 
book,  in  which  case,  you  know,  it  had  a  long  gauntlet  to  run. 
It  is  impossible  to  read  thoroughly  such  writings  as  those  of 
Harper  and  Otis,  who  take  a  page  to  say  what  requires  but  a 
sentence,  or  rather,  who  give  you  whole  pages  of  what  is  no- 
thing to  the  purpose.  A  cursory  race  over  the  ground  is  as  much 
as  they  can  claim.  It  is  easy  for  them,  at  this  day,  to  endeavor 
to  whitewash  their  party,  when  the  greater  part  are  dead  of  those 
who  witnessed  what  passed,  others  old  and  become  indifferent 
to  the  subject,  and  others  indisposed  to  take  the  trouble  of  an- 
swering them.  As  to  Otis,  his  attempt  is  to  prove  that  the  sun 
does  not  shine  at  mid-day ;  that  that  is  not  a  fact  which  every 
one  saw.  He  merits  no  notice.  It  is  well  known  that  Harper 
had  little  scruple  about  facts  where  detection  was  not  obvious. 
By  placing  in  false  lights  \vhatever  admits  it,  and  passing  over  in 
silence  what  does  not,  a  plausible  aspect  may  be  presented  of  any- 
thing. He  takes  great  pains  to  prove,  for  instance,  that  Hamil- 
ton was  no  monarchist,  by  exaggerating  his  own  intimacy  with 
him,  and  the  impossibility,  if  he  was  so,  that  he  should  not,  at 
some  time,  have  betrayed  it  to  him.  This  may  pass  with  unin- 
formed readers,  but  not  with  those  who  have  had  it  from  Hamil- 
ton's own  mouth.     I  am  one  of  those,  and  but  one  of  many.    At 


390  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

my  own  taWe,  in  presence  of  Mr.  Adams,  Knox,  Randolph,  and 
myself,  in  a  dispute  between  Mr.  Adams  and  himself,  he  avowed 
his  preference  of  monarchy  over  every  other  government,  and  his 
opinion  that  the  English  was  the  most  perfect  model  of  govern- 
ment ever  devised  by  the  wit  of  man,  Mr.  Adams  agreeing  "  if 
its  corruptions  were  done  away."  While  Hamilton  insisted  that 
"  with  these  corruptions  it  was  perfect,  and  without  them  it 
would  be  an  impracticable  government."  Can  any  one  read  Mr. 
Adams'  defence  of  the  American  constitutions  without  seeing 
that  he  was  a  monarchist  ?  And  J.  Q..  Adams,  the  son,  was  more 
explicit  than  the  father,  in  his  answer  to  Paine's  rights  of  man. 
So  much  for  leaders.  Their  followers  were  divided.  Some  went 
the  same  lengths,  others,  and  I  believe  the  greater  part,  only 
wished  a  stronger  Executive.  When  I  arrived  at  New  York  in 
1790,  to  take  a  part  in  the  administration,  being  fresh  from  the 
French  revolution,  while  in  its  first  and  pure  stage,  and  conse- 
quently somewhat  whetted  up  in  my  own  republican  principles, 
I  found  a  state  of  things,  in  the  general  society  of  the  place, 
which  I  could  not  have  supposed  possible.  Being  a  stranger 
there,  I  was  feasted  from  table  to  table,  at  large  set  dinners,  the 
parties  generally  from  twenty  to  thirty.  The  revolution  I  had 
left,  and  that  we  had  just  gone  through  in  the  recent  change  of 
our  own  government,  being  the  common  topics  of  conversation, 
I  was  astonished  to  find  the  general  prevalence  of  monarchical 
sentiments,  insomuch  that  in  maintaining  those  of  republicanism, 
I  had  always  the  whole  company  on  my  hands,  never  scarcely 
finding  among  them  a  single  co-advocate  in  that  argument,  un- 
less some  old  member  of  Congress  happened  to  be  present.  The 
furthest  that  any  one  would  go,  in  support  of  the  republican  fea- 
tures of  our  new  government,  would  be  to  say,  "  the  present  con- 
stitution is  well  as  a  beginning,  and  may  be  allowed  a  fair  trial ;  but 
it  is,  in  fact,  only  a  stepping  stone  to  something  better."  Among 
their  writers,  Denny,  the  editor  of  the  Portfolio,  who  was  a  kind 
of  oracle  with  them,  and  styled  the  Addison  of  America,  openly 
avowed  his  preference  of  monarchy  over  all  other  forms  of  gov- 
brnment,  prided  himself  on  the  avowal,  and  maintained  it  by  ar- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  391 

gument  freely  and  without  reserve,  in  his  publications.  I  do  not, 
myself,  know  that  the  Essex  junto  of  Boston  were  monarchists, 
but  I  have  always  heard  it  so  said,  and  never  doubted. 

These,  my  dear  Sir,  are  but  detached  items  from  a  great  mass 
of  proofs  then  fully  before  the  public.  They  are  unknown  to 
you,  because  you.  were  absent  in  Europe,  and  they  are  now  dis- 
avowed by  the  party.  T3ut,  had  it  not  been  for  the  firm  and  de- 
termined stand  then  made  by  a  counter-party,  no  man  can  say 
what  our  government  would  have  been  at  this  day.  Monarchy, 
to  be  sure,  is  now  defeated,  and  they  wish  it  should  be  forgotten 
that  it  was  ever  advocated.  They  see  that  it  is  desperate,  and 
treat  its  imputation  to  them  as  a  calumny ;  and  I  verily  believe 
that  none  of  them  have  it  now  in  direct  aim.  Yet  the  spirit  is 
not  done  away.  The  same  party  takes  now  what  ihey  deem 
the  next  best  ground,  the  consolidation  of  the  government ;  the 
giving  to  the  federal  member  of  the  government,  by  unlimited 
constructions  of  the  constitution,  a  control  over  all  the  functions 
of  the  States,  and  the  concentration  of  all  power  ultimately  at 
Washington. 

The  true  history  of  that  conflict  of  parties  will  never  be  in 
.possession  of  the  public,  until,  by  the  death  of  the  actors  in  it, 
the  hoards  of  their  letters  shall  be  broken  up  and  given  to  the 
world.  I  should  not  fear  to  appeal  to  those  of  Harper  himself, 
if  he  has  kept  copies  of  them,  for  abundant  proof  that  he  was 
himself  a  monarchist.  I  shall  not  live  to  see  these  unrevealed 
proofs,  nor  probably  you ;  for  time  will  be  requisite.  But  time 
will,  in  the  end,  produce  the  truth.  And,  after  all,  it  is  but  a 
truth  which  exists  in  every  country,  where  not  suppressed  by  the 
rod  of  despotism.  Men,  according  to  their  constitutions,  and  the 
circumstances  in  which  they  are  placed,  differ  honestly  in  opin- 
ion. Some  are  whigs,  liberals,  democrats,  call  them  what  you 
please.  Others  are  tories,  serviles,  aristocrats,  &c.  The  latter 
fear  the  people,  and  wish  to  transfer  all  power  to  the  higher 
classes  of  society ;  the  former  consider  the  people  as  the  safest  de- 
pository of  power  in  the  last  resort ;  they  cherish  them  therefore, 
and  wish  to  leave  in  them  all  the  powers  to  the  exercise  of  which 


892  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

they  are  competent.  This  is  the  division  of  sentiment  now  ex 
isting  in  the  United  States.  It  is  the  common  division  of  whig 
and  tory,  or  according  to  our  denominations  of  republican  and 
federal ;  and  is  the  most  salutary  of  all  divisions,  and  ought, 
therefore,  to  be  fostered,  instead  of  being  amalgamated.  For, 
take  away  this,  and  some  more  dangerous  principle  of  division 
will  take  its  place.  But  there  is  really  ho  amalgamation.  The 
parties  exist  now  as  heretofore.  The  one,  indeed,  has  thrown 
oil"  its  old  name,  and  has  not  yet  assumed  a  new  one,  although 
obviously  consolidationists.  And  among  those  in  the  offices  of 
every  denomination  I  believe  it  to  be  a  bare  minority. 

I  have  gone  into  these  facts  to  show  how  one-sided  a  view  of 
this  case  Harper  has  presented.  I  do  not  recall  these  recollec- 
tions with  pleasure,  but  rather  wish  to  forget  them,  nor  did  I  ever 
permit  them  to  affect  social  intercourse.  And  now,  least  of  all, 
am  disposed  to  do  so.  Peace  and  good  will  with  all  mankind  is 
my  sincere  wish.  1  willingly  leave  to  the  present  generation  to 
conduct  their  affairs  as  they  please.  And  in  my  general  affection 
to  the  whole  human  family,  and  my  particular  devotion  to  my 
friends,  be  assured  of  the  high  and  special  estimation  iu  which 
yourself  is  cordially  held. 


TO    JOSEPH    C.    CABELL. 

XloNTiiiii.Lo,  Jiimiary  11,  1826. 

Dear  Sik, — We  are  dreadfully  nonplussed  here  by  the  non- 
arrival  of  our  three  Professors.  We  apprehend  that  the  idea  of 
our  opening  on  the  1st  of  February  prevails  so  much  abroad, 
(alt!;()Ugh  we  have  always  mentioned  it  doubtfully,)  as  that  the 
students  will  assemble  on  that  day  without  awaiting  the  further 
notice  which  was  promised.  To  send  them  away  will  he  dis^ 
couraging,  and  to  open  an  University  without  Mathematics  or 
Natural  Philosophy  would  bring  ou  us  ridicule  and  disgrace.  We 
tln;rufore  publish  an  advertisement,  stating  that  on  llie  arrival 


CORRESPONDENCE.  393 

of  these  Professors,  notice  will  be  given  of  the  day  of  opening 
the  institution. 

Governor  Barbour  writes  me   hopefully   of  getting   our  fifty 
thousand    dollars   from    Congress.      The    proposition    has    beec 
originated  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  referred  to  the  com- 
mittee of  claims,  the  chairman  of  which  has  prepared  a  very  fa- 
vorable report,  and  a  bill  conformable,  assuming  the  repayment 
of  all  interest  which  the  State  has  actually  paid.     The  legislature 
will  certainly  owe  to  us  the  recovery  of  this  money ;  for  had  they 
not  given  it  in  some  measure  the  reverenced  character  of  a  dona- 
tion for  the  promotion  of  learning,  it  would  never  have  been  paid. 
It  is  to  be  hoped,  therefore,  that  the  displeasure   incurred  by 
wringing  it  from  them  at  the  last  session,  will  now  give  way  to 
■  a  contrary  feeling,  and  even  place  us  on  a  ground  of  some  merit. 
Should  this  sentiment  take   place,  and  the   arrival   of  our  Pro- 
fessors, and  filling  our  dormitories  with  students  on  the    1st  of 
February,  encourage  them  to   look  more  favorably  towards  us, 
perhaps  it  might  dispose  them  to  enlarge  somewhat  their  order 
on  the  same   fund.     You  observe  the  Proctor  has  stated  in  a 
letter  accompanying  our  Report,  that  it  will  take  about  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  more  than  we  have  to  finish  the  Rotunda. 
Besides  this,  an  Anatomical  theatre  (cDSting  about  as  much  as 
one  of  our  hotels,  say  about  five  thousand   dollars,)  is   indispen- 
sable to  the  school  of  Anatomy.      There  cannot  be  a  single  dis- 
section until  a  proper  theatre  is  prepared,  giving  an  advantageous 
view  of  the  operation  to  those  within,  and  effectually  excluding 
observation  from  without.     Either  the  additional  sums,  there- 
fore, of  twenty-five  thousand  and  five  thousand  dollars  will  bo 
wanting,  or  we  must  be  permitted  to  appropriate  a  part  of  the 
fifty  thousand  to  a  theatre,  leaving  the  Rotunda  unfinished  for  the 
present.     Yet  I  should  think  neither  of  these  objects  an  equivalent 
for  renewing  the  displeasure  of  the  legislature.     Unless  we  can 
carry  their  hearty  patronage  with  us,  the  institution   can  never 
flourish.     I  would  not,  therefore,  hint  at  this  additional  aid,  unless 
It  were  agreeable  to  our  friends  generally,  and  tolerably  sure  of 
being  carried  without  irritation. 


394  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

In  your  letter  of  December  the  31st,  you  say  my  "  hand-writ' 
ing  and  my  letters  have  great  effect  there,"  i.  e.  at  Richmond. 
I  am  sensible,  my  dear  Sir,  of  the  kindness  with  which  this  en- 
couragement is  held  up  to  me.  But  my  views  of  their  effect  are 
very  different.  When  I  retired  from  the  administration  of  public 
affairs,  I  thought  I  saw  some  evidence  that  I  retired  with  a  good 
degree  of  public  favor,  and  that  my  conduct  in  office  had  been 
considered,  by  the  one  party  at  least,  with  approbation,  and  with 
acquiescence  by  the  other.  But  the  attempt  in  which  I  have  em- 
barked so  earnestly,  to  procure  an  improvement  in  the  moral 
condition  of  my  native  State,  although,  perhaps,  in  other  States 
it  may  have  strengthened  good  dispositions,  it  has  assuredly  weak- 
ened them  within  our  own.  The  attempt  ran  foul  of  so  man) 
local  interests,  of  so  many  personal  views,  and  so  much  ignorance, 
and  I  have  been  considered  as  so  particularly  its  promoter,  that  I 
see  evidently  a  great  change  of  sentiment  towards  myself.  I  can- 
not doubt  its  having  dissatisfied  with  myself  a  respectable  minority, 
if  not  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Delegates.  I  feel  it  deeply,  and 
very  discouragingly.  Yet  I  shall  not  give  way.  I  have  ever 
found  in  my  progress  through  life,  that,  acting  for  the  public,  if 
we  do  always  what  is  right,  the  approbation  denied  in  the  begin- 
ning will  surely  follow  us  in  the  end.  It  is  from  posterity  we  are 
to  expect  remuneration  for  the  sacrifices  we  are  making  for  their 
service,  of  time,  quiet  and  good  will  And  I  fear  not  the  appeal. 
The  multitude  of  fine  young  men  whom  we  shall  redeem  from 
ignorance,  who  will  feel  that  they  owe  to  us  the  elevation  of 
mind,  of  character  and  station  they  will  be  able  to  attain  from 
the  result  of  our  efforts,  will  insure  their  remembering  us  with 
gratitude.  We  will  not,  then,  be  "  weary  in  well-doing." 
Usque  ad  aras  amicus  tuus. 


TO    GENEKAL    ALEX^VNDER    SMYTH. 

MoNTiOKLi.o,  January  17,  1825. 

Deab  Sir, — I  have  duly  received  four  proof  sheets  of  your  ex- 
planation of  the  Apocalypse,  with  your  letters  of  December  29th 


CORRESPONDENCE.  395 

and  January  8th  ;  in  the  last  of  which  you  request  that,  so  soon 
as  I  shall  be  of  opinion  that  the  explanation  you  have  given  is 
correct,  I  would  express  it  in  a  letter  to  you.  Prom  this  you 
must  be  so  good  as  to  excuse  me,  because  I  make  it  an  invariable 
rule  to  decline  ever  giving  opinions  on  new  publications  in  any 
case  whatever.  No  man  on  earth  has  less  taste  or  talent  for 
criticism  than  myself,  and  least  and  last  of  all  should  I  undertake 
to  criticize  works  on  the  Apocalypse.  It  is  between  fifty  and 
sixty  years  since  I  read  it,  and  I  then  considered  it  as  merely  the 
ravings  of  a  maniac,  no  more  worthy  nor  capable  of  explanation 
than  the  incoherences  of  our  own  nightly  dreams.  I  was,  there- 
fore, well  pleased  to  see,  in  your  first  proof  sheet,  that  it  was  said 
to  be  not  the  production  of  St.  John,  but  of  Cerinthus,  a  century 
after  the  death  of  that  apostle.  Yet  the  change  of  the  author's 
name  does  not  lessen  the  extravagances  of  the  composition  ;  and 
come  they  from  whomsoever  they  may,  I  cannot  so  far  respect 
them  as  to  consider  them  as  an  allegorical  narrative  of  events, 
past  or  subsequent.  There  is  not  coherence  enough  in  them  to 
countenance  any  suite  of  rational  ideas.  You  will  judge,  there- 
fore, from  this  how  impossible  I  think  it  that  either  your  explana- 
tion, or  that  of  any  man  in  "  the  heavens  above,  or  on  the  earth 
beneath,"  can  be  a  correct  one.  What  has  no  meaning  admits 
no  explanation  ;  and  pardon  me  if  I  say,  with  the  candor  of 
friendship,  that  I  think  your  time  too  valuable,  and  your  under- 
standing of  too  high  an  order,  to  be  wasted  on  these  paralogisms. 
You  will  perceive,  I  hope,  also,  that  I  do  not  consider  them  as 
revelations  of  the  Supreme  Being,  whom  I  would  not  so  far  blas- 
pheme as  to  impute  to  him  a  pretension  of  revelation,  couched 
at  the  same  time  in  terms  which,  he  would  know,  were  never  to 
be  understood  by  those  to  whom  they  were  addressed.  In  the 
candor  of  these  observations,  I  hope  you  will  see  proofs  of  the 
confidence,  esteem  and  respect  which  I  truly  entertain  for  you. 


396  JEFFERSON'S    ^ORKS 


JOHN    ADAMS    TO    THOMAS    JEFFERSON. 

Quixcy,  Jiinunry  23,  1S25. 

My  Dear  Sir, — We  think  ourselves  possessed,  or  at  least  we 
boast  that  we  are  so,  of  liberty  of  conscience  on  all  subjects  and 
of  the  right  of  free  inquiry  and  private  judgment  in  all  cases, 
and  yet  how  far  are  Ave  from  these  exalted  privileges  in  fact. 
There  exists,  I  believe,  throughout  the  whole  Christian  world,  a 
law  which  makes  it  blasphemy  to  deny,  or  to  doubt  the .  divine 
inspiration  of  all  the  books  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  from 
Genesis  to  Revelations.  In  most  countries  of  Europe  it  is  pun- 
ished by  fire  at  the  stake,  or  the  rack,  or  the  wheel.  In  Eng- 
land itself,  it  is  punished  by  boring  through  the  tongue  with  a 
red-hot  poker.  In  America  it  is  not  much  better  ;  even  in  our 
Massachusetts,  which,  I  believe,  upon  the  whole,  is  as  temperate 
and  moderate  in  religious  zeal  as  most  of  the  States,  a  law  was 
made  in  the  latter  end  of  the  last  century,  repealing  the  cruel 
punishments  of  the  former  laws,  but  substituting  fine  and  im- 
prisonment upon  all  those  blasphemies  upon  any  book  of  the  Old 
Testament  or  New.  Now,  what  free  inquiry,  when  a  writer 
must  surely  encounter  the  risk  of  fine  or  imprisonment  for  ad- 
ducing any  arguments  for  investigation  into  the  divine  authority 
of  those  books  ?  Who  would  run  the  risk  of  translating  Volney's 
Recherches  Nouvelles  ?  Who  would  run  the  risk  of  translating 
Dapin's  ?  But  I  cannot  enlarge  upon  this  subject,  though  I  have 
it  much  at  heart.  I  think  such  laws  a  great  embarrassment,  great 
obstructions  to  the  improvement  of  the  human  mind.  Books 
t.hat  caunot  bear  examination,  certainly  ought  not  to  be  estab- 
lished as  divine  inspiration  by  penal  laws.  It  is  true,  few  per- 
sons appear  desirous  to  put  such  laws  in  execution,  and  it  is  also 
true  that  some  few  persons  are  hardy  enough  to  venture  to  de- 
part from  them  ;  but  as  long  as  they  continue  in  force  as  laws, 
the  human  mind  must  make  an  awkward  and  clumsy  progress  in 
its  investigations.  I  wish  they  were  repealed.  The  substance 
and  essence  of  Christianity,  as  I  understand  it,  is  eternal  and  un- 
changeable, and  will  bear  examination  forever  ;  but  it  has  been 


CORRESPONDENCE.  397 

mixed  with  extraneous  ingredients,  which,  I  think,  will  not  bear 
examination,  and  they  ought  to  be  separated.     Adieu. 


TO  .* 

Mc>>'TiCELT,o,  Fcliniary  R,  18'25. 

Dear  Sir, — Although  our  Professors  were,  on  the  5th  of  Dt- 
cember,  still  in  an  English  port,  that  they  were  safe  raises  me 
from  the  dead,  for  I  was  almost  ready  to  give  up  the  ship.  That 
was  eight  weeks  ago  ;  they  may  therefore  be  daily  expected. 

In  most  public  seminaries  text-books  are  prescribed  to  each  of 
the  several  schools,  as  the  norma  docendi  in  that  school ;  and  this 
is  generally  done  by  authority  of  the  trustees.  I  should  not  pro- 
pose this  generally  in  our  University,  because  I  believe  none  of 
us  are  so  much  at  the  heights  of  science  in  the  several  branches, 
as  to  undertake  this,  and  therefore  that  it  will  be  better  left  to  the 
Professors  until  occasion  of  interference  shall  be  given.  But 
there  is  one  branch  in  which  we  are  the  best  judges,  in  which 
heresies  may  be  taught,  of  so  interesting  a  character  to  our  own 
State  and  to  the  United  States,  as  to  make  it  a  duty  in  us  to  lay 
down  the  principles  which  are  to  be  taught.  It  is  that  of  gov- 
ernment. Mr.  Gilmer  being  withdrawn,  we  know  not  who  his 
successor  may  be.  He  may  be  a  Richmond  lawyer,  or  one  of 
that  school  of  quondam  federalism,  now  consolidation.  It  is  our 
duty  to  guard  against  such  principles  being  disseminated  among 
our  youth,  and  the  diffusion  of  that  poison,  by  a  previous  prescrip- 
tion of  the  texts  to  be  followed  in  their  discourses.  I  therefore 
enclose  you  a  resolution  which  I  think  of  proposing  at  our  next 
meeting,  strictly  confiding  it  to  your  own  knowledge  alone,  .and 
to  that  of  Mr.  L'^yall,  to  whom  you  may  communicate  it,  as  I 
am  sure  it  will  harmonize  with  his  principles.  I  wish  it  kept  to 
ourselves,  because  I  have  always  found  that  the  less  such  things 
are  spoken  of  beforehand,  the  less  obstruction  is  contrived  to  be 
thrown  in  their  way.  1  have  communicated  it  to  Mr.  Madison. 
Should  the  bill  for  district  colleges  pass  in  the  end,  om-  scheme 

*  Address  lost. 


398  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

of  education  will  be  complete.  But  the  branch  of  primary 
schools  may  need  attention,  and  should  be  brought,  like  the  rest, 
to  the  forum  of  the  legislature.  The  Governor,  in  his  annual 
message,  gives  a  favorable  account  of  them  in  the  lump.  But 
this  is  not  sufficient.  We  should  know  the  operation  of  the  law- 
establishing  these  schools  more  in  detail.  We  should  know  how 
much  money  is  furnished  to  each  county  every  year,  and  how 
much  education  it  distributes  every  year,  and  such  a  statement 
should  be  laid  before  the  legislature  every  year.  The  sum  of  edu- 
cation rendered  in  each  county  in  each  year  should  be  estimated' 
by  adding  together  the  number  of  months  which  each  scholar  at- 
tended, and  stating  the  sum  total  of  the  months  which  all  of  thorn 
together  attended,  e.  g.,  if  in  any  county  one  scholar  attended 
two  months,  three  others  four  months  each,  eight  others  six 
months  each,  then  the  sum  of  these  added  together  will  make 
sixty-two  months  of  schooling  afforded  in  the  county  that  year ; 
and  the  number  of  sixty-two  months  entered  in  a  table  opposite, 
to  the  name  of  the  county,  gives  a  satisfactory  idea  of  the  sum 
or  quantum  of  education  it  rendered  in  that  year.  This  will  en- 
able us  to  take  many  interesting  and  important  views  of  the 
sufficiency  of  the  plan  established,  and  of  the  amendments  nec- 
essary to  produce  the  greatest  effect.  I  enclose  a  form  of  the 
table  which  would  be  required,  in  which  you  will  of  course  be 
sensible  that  the  numbers  entered  are  at  hap-hazard,  and  exempli 
gratia,  as  I  know  nothing  of  the  sums  furnished  Or  quantum  of 
education  rendered  in  each  or  any  county.  I  send  also  the  form 
of  such  a  resolution  as  should  be  passed  by  the  one  or  the  other 
house,  perhaps  better  in  the  lower  one,  and  moved  by  some  mem- 
ber nowise  connected  with  us,  for  the  less  we  appear  before  the 
house,  the  less  we  shall  excite  dissatisfaction. 

I  mentioned  to  you  formerly  our  want  of  an  anatomical  hall 
for  dissection.  But  if  we  get  the  fifty  thousand  dollars  from 
Congress,  we  can  charge  to  that,  as  the  library  fund,  the  six  thou- 
sand dollars  of  the  building  fund  which  we  have  advanced  for  it 
in  books  and  apparatus,  and  repaying  from  the  former  the  six 
thousand  dollars  due  to  the  latter,  apply  so  much  of  it  as  is  nee- 


COREESPONDENOE. 


399 


essary  for  the  anatomical  building.  No  application  oii  the  sub- 
ject need  therefore  be  made  to  our  legislature.  But  I  hear  no- 
thing of  our  prospects  before  Congress.     Yours  affectionately. 

Resolved,  That  the  Governor  be  requested  to  have  prepared 
and  laid  before  the  legislature,  at  their  next  session,  a  statement 
in  detail  of  the  sum  of  education  which,  under  the  law  establish- 
ing primary  schools,  has  been  rendered  in  the  schools  of  each 
county  respectively ;  that  it  be  stated  in  a  tabular  form,  in  the 
first  column  of  which  table  shall  be  the  names  of  the  counties 
alphabetically  arranged,  and  then,  for  every  year,  two  other  col- 
umns, in  the  first  of  which  shall  be  entered,  opposite  to  the  name 
of  each  county,  the  sum  of  money  furnished  it  in  that  year,  and 
in  the  second  shall  be  stated  the  sum  of  education  rendered  in 
the  same  county  and  year ;  which  sum  is  to  be  estimated  by  add- 
ing together  the  number  of  months  of  schooling  which  the  sev- 
eral individuals  attending  received.  And  that  henceforward  a 
similar  statement  be  prepared  and  laid  before  the  legislature  every 
year  for  that  year. 


&c 


Accomac       .     . 

.     $400 

216  months  schooling 

Albemarle     .     . 

500 

234 

a 

Amelia          .     . 

.       250 

183 

u 

Amherst         .     . 

.       400 

210 

(f 

Augusta        .     . 

.       800 

461 

a 

TO  

# 

MoNTiCELLo,  February  20,  182.5. 

Dear  Sir, — I  thank  you  for  the  copy  of  your  Cherokee  gram- 
mar, which  I  have  gone  over  with  attention  and  satisfaction.  We 
generally  learn  languages  for  the  benefit  of  reading  the  books 
written  in  them.  But  here  our  reward  must  be  the  addition 
made  to  the  philosophy  of  language.    In  this  point  of  view  your 

*  AddreBB  lost. 


400  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

analysis  of  the  Cherokee  adds  valuable  matter  for  reflection,  and 
strengthens  our  desire  to  see  more  of  these  languages  as  scientific- 
ally elucidated.  Their  grammatical  devices  for  the  modifica- 
tion of  their  words  by  a  syllable  prefixed  to,  or  inserted  in  the 
middle,  or  added  to  its  end,  and  by  other  combinations  so  difi'er- 
ent  from  ours,  prove  that  if  man  came  from  one  stock,  his  lan- 
guages did  not.  A  late  grammarian  has  said  that  all  words  were 
originally  monosyllables.  The  Indian  languages  disprove  this.  I 
should  conjecture  that  the  Cherokees,  for  example,  have  formed 
their  language  not  by  single  words,  but  by  phrases.  I  have 
known  some  children  learn  to  speak,  not  by  a  word  at  a  time,  but 
by  whole  phrases.  Thus  the  Cherokee  has  no  name  for  father 
in  the  abstract,  but  only  as  combined  with  some  one  of  his  rela- 
tions. A  complex  idea  being  a  fasciculus  of  simple  ideas  bundled 
together,  it  is  rare  that  different  languages  make  up  their  bundles 
alike,  and  hence  the  difficulty  of  translating  from  one  language 
to  another.  European  nations  have  so  long  had  intercourse  will 
one  another,  as  to  have  approximated  their  complex  expressions 
much  towards  one  another.  But  I  believe  we  shall  find  it  im- 
possible to  translate  our  language  into  any  of  the  Indian,  or  any 
of  theirs  into  ours.  I  hope  you  will  pursue  your  undertaking, 
and  that  others  will  follow  your  example  with  other  of  their 
languages.  It  will  open  a  wide  field  for  reflection  on  the  gram- 
matical organization  of  languages,  their  structure  and  character 
I  am  persuaded  that  among  the  tribes  on  our  two  continents  a 
great  number  of  languages,  radically  different,  will  be  found.  It 
will  be  curious  to  consider  how  so  many  so  radically  different 
will  be  found.  It  will  be  curious  to  consider  how  so  many  so 
radically  different  have  been  preserved  by  such  small  tribes  in 
coterminous  settlements  of  moderate  extent.  I  had  once  collected 
about  thirty  vocabularies  formed  of  the  same  English  words,  ex- 
pressive of  such  simple  objects  only  as  must  be  present  and  famil- 
iar to  every  one  under  these  circumstances.  They  were  unfor- 
tunately lost.  But  I  remember  that  on  a  trial  to  arrange  them 
into  families  or  dialects,  I  found  in  one  instance  that  about  half  a 


CORRESPONDENCE,  401 

dozen  might  be  so  classed,  in  another  perhaps  three  or  four. 
But  I  am  sure  that  a  third  at  least,  if  not  more,  were  perfectly  in- 
sulation from  each  other.  Yet  this  is  the  only  index  by  which 
we  can  trace  their  filiation. 

I  had  received  your  observations  on  the  changes  proposed  in 
Harvard  College,  without  knowing  from  whom  they  came  to  me, 
and  had  been  so  much  pleased  with  them  as  to  have  put  them 
by  for  preservation.  These  observations,  with  the  report  and 
documents  to  which  they  relate,  are  a  treasure  of  information  to 
us ;  they  give  to  our  infant  institution  the  expei.ence  of  your  an- 
cient and  eminent  establishment,  I  hope  that  we  shall  be  like 
cordial  colleagues  in  office,  acting  in  harmony  and  affection  for 
the  same  object.  Our  European  professors,  five  in  number,  are 
at  length  arrived,  and  excite  strong  presumptions  that  they  have 
been  judiciously  selected.  We  have  announced  our  opening  on 
the  7th  of  the  ensuing  month  of  March.  With  sincere  wishes  for 
the  prosperity  of  yours,  as  well  as  ours,  I  pray  you  to  accept  as- 
surances of  my  high  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    THOMAS    JEFFERSON    SMITH. 

Mo.NTicELLo,  February  21,  1825. 

This  letter  will,  to  you,  be  as  one  from  the  dead.  The  writer 
will  be  in  the  grave  before  you  can  weigh  its  counsels.  Your 
affectionate  and  excellent  father  has  requested  that  I  would  ad- 
dress to  you  something  which  might  possibly  have  a  favorable 
influence  on  the  course  of  life  you  have  to  run,  and  I  too,  as  a 
namesake,  feel  an  interest  in  that  course.  Few  words  will  be 
necessary,  with  good  dispositions  on  your  part.  Adore  God. 
Reverence  and  cherish  your  parents.  Love  your  neighbor  as 
yourself,  and  your  country  more  than  yourself.  Be  just.  Be  true. 
Murmur  not  at  the  ways  of  Providence.  So  shall  the  life  into 
which  you  have  entered,  be  the  portal  to  one  of  eternal  and  in- 
effable bliss.     And  if  to  the  dead  it  is  permitted  to  care  for  the 

VOL.  VII.  26 


402  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

things  of  this  world,  every  action  of  your  life  will  he  under  my 
regard.     Farewell. 

The  portrait  of  a  good  man  by  the  most  sublime  of  poets,  f 01 
your  imitation. 

Lord,  who's  the  happy  man  that  may  to  thy  blest  courts  repair ; 

jSTot  stranger-lite  to  visit  them,  but  to  inhabit  there  ? 

'Tis  he  whose  every  thought  and  deed  by  rules  of  virtue  moves ; 

Whose  generous  tongue  disdains  to  speak  the  thing  his  heart  disproves. 

Who  never  did  a  slander  forge,  his  neighbor's  fame  to  wound ; 

Nor  hearken  to  a  false  report,  by  malice  whispered  round. 

Who  vice  in  all  its  pomp  and  power,  can  treat  with  just  neglect ; 

ind  piety,  though  clothed  in  rage,  religiously  respect. 

(Vho  to  his  plighted  vows  and  trust  has  ever  firmly  stood ; 

And  though  he  promise  to  his  loss,  he  makes  his  promise  good. 

tThose  soul  in  usury  disdains  his  treasure  to  employ ; 

>Vhom  no  rewards  can  ever  bribe  the  guiltless  to  destroy. 

The  man,  who,  by  this  steady  course,  has  happiness  insur'd. 

When  earth's  foundations  shake,  shall  stand,  by  Providence  seour'd. 

A  Decalogue  of  Canons  for  observation  in  practical  life. 

1.  Never  put  off  till  to-morrow  what  you  can  do  to-day. 

2.  Wever  trouble  another  for  what  you  can  do  yourself. 

3.  Never  spend  your  money  before  you  have  it. 

4.  Never  buy  what  you  do  not  want,  because  it  is  cheap ;  it 
V(  11  ibe  dear  to  you. 

5.  Pride  costs  us  more  than  hunger,  thirst  and  cold. 

6.  We  never  repent  of  having  eaten  too  little. 

7.  Nothing  is  troublesome  that  we  do  willingly. 

8.  Ho-w-  much  pain  have  cost  us  the  evils  which  have  nevei 
happ  ned. 

9.  Take  things  always  by  their  smooth  handle 

19    When  angry,  count  ten,  before  you  speak ;  if  very  angry, 
an  hi.,  .dred. 


TO   EDWABD    LIVINGSTON,    ESq. 

MoNTicELi.o,  March  26,  1825. 

Deah  Sir, — I  know  how  apt  we  are  to  consider  those  whom 
we  knew  long  ago,  and  have  not  since  seen,  to  be  exactly  still 


COERESPONDENOE.  403 

what  they  were  when  we  knew  them  ;  and  to  have  been  station- 
ary in  body  and  mind  as  they  have  been  in  our  recollections. 
Have  you  not  been  under  that  illusion  with  respect  to  myself? 
When  I  had  the  pleasure  of  being  a  fellow-laborer  with  you  in 
the  public  service,  age  had  ripened,  but  not  yet  impaired  what- 
ever of  mind  I  had  at  any  time  possessed.  But  five-and-twen- 
ty  chilling  winters  have  since  rolled  over  my  head,  and  whitened 
every  hair  of  it.  Worn  down  by  time  in  bodily  strength,  unable  to 
walk  even  into  my  garden  without  too  much  fatigue,  I  cannot 
doubt  that  the  mind  has  also  suffered  its  portion  of  decay.  Tf 
reason  and  experience  had  not  taught  me  this  law  of  nature, 
my  own  consciousness  is  a  sufficient  monitor,  and  warns  me  to 
keep  in  mind  the  golden  precept  of  Horace, 

"  Solve  senescentem,  mature  sanus,  equum,  ne 
Pcceet  ad  extremum  ridendus." 

1  am  not  equal,  dear  Sir,  to  the  task  you  have  proposed  to  me. 
To  examine  a  code  of  laws  newly  reduced  to  system  and  text,  to 
weigh  their  bearings  on  each  other  in  all  their  parts,  their  harmo- 
ny with  reason  and  natm'e,  and  their  adaptation  to  the  habits  and 
sentiments  of  those  for  whom  they  are  prepared,  and  whom,  in 
this  case,  I  do  not  know,  is  a  task  far  above  what  I  am  now,  or 
perhaps  ever  was.  I  have  attended  to  so  much  of  your  work  as 
has  been  heretofore  laid  before  the  public,  and  have  looked,  with 
some  attention  also,  into  what  you  have  now  sent  me.  It  will 
certainly  arrange  your  name  with  the  sages  of  antiquity.  Time 
and  changes  in  the  condition  and  constitution  of  society  may  re- 
quire occasional  and  corresponding  modifications.  One  single 
object,  if  your  provision  attains  it,  will  entitle  you  to  the  endless 
gratitude  of  society ;  that  of  restraining  judges  from  usurping  leg- 
islation. And  with  no  body  of  men  is  this  restraint  more  want- 
ing than  with  the  judges  of  what  is  commonly  called  oiu-  gener- 
al government,  but  what  I  call  our  foreign  department.  They 
are  practising  on  the  constitution  by  inferences,  analogies,  and 
sophisms,  as  they  would  on  an  ordinary  law.  They  do  not  seem 
aware  that  it  is  not  even  a  constitution,  formed  by  a  single  au- 


•iOt:  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

thority,  and  subject  to  a  single  superintendence  and  control ;  but 
that  it  is  a  compact  of  many  independent  powers,  every  single 
one  of  which  claims  an  equal  right  to  understand  it,  and  to  re- 
quire its  observance.  However  strong  the  cord  of  compact  may 
be,  there  is  a  point  of  tension  at  which  it  will  break.  A  few 
such  doctrinal  decisions,  as  barefaced  as  that  of  the  Cohens,  hap- 
pening to  bear  immediately  on  two  or  three  of  the  large  States, 
may  induce  them  to  join  in  arresting  the  march  of  government, 
and  in  arousing  the  co-States  to  pay  some  attention  to  what  is 
passing,  to  bring  back  the  compact  to  its  original  principles,  or  to 
modify  it  legitimately  by  the  express  consent  of  the  parties  them- 
selves, and  not  by  the  usurpation  of  their  created  agents.  They 
imagine  they  can  lead  us  into  a  consolidate  government,  while 
their  road  leads  directly  to  its  dissolution.  This  member  of  the 
government  was  at  first  considered  as  the  most  harmless  and 
helpless  of  all  its  organs.  But  it  has  proved  that  the  power  of  de- 
claring what  the  law  is,  ad  libitum,  by  sapping  and  mining,  slily, 
and  without  alarm,  the  foundations  of  the  constitution,  can  do 
what  open  force  would  not  dare  to  attempt.  I  have  not  observed 
whether,  in  your  code,  you  have  provided  against  caucussing  ju- 
dicial decisions,  and  for  requiring  judges  to  give  their  opinions 
seriatim,  every  man  for  himself,  with  his  reasons  and  authorities 
at  large,  to  be  entered  of  record  in  his  own  words.  A  regard  for 
reputation,  and  the  judgment  of  the  world,  may  sometimes  be  felt 
where  conscience  is  dormant,  or  indolence  inexcitable.  Expe- 
rience has  proved  that  impeachment  in  our  forms  is  completely 
inefficient. 

I  am  pleased  with  the  style  and  diction  of  your  laws  Plain 
and  intelligible  as  the  ordinary  writings  of  common  sense,  I  hope 
it  will  produce  imitation.  Of  all  the  countries  on  earth  of  which 
I  have  any  knowledge,  the  style  of  the  Acts  of  the  British  par- 
liament is  the  most  barbarous,  uncouth,  and  unintelligible.  It 
can  be  understood  by  those  alone  who  are  in  the  daily  habit  of 
studying  such  tautologous,  involved  and  parenthetical  jargon. 
Where  they  found  their  model,  I  know  not.     Neither  ancient 


CORRESPONDENCE.  405 

nor  modern  codes,  nor  even  their  own  early  statutes,  furnish  any 
such  example.     And,  like  faithful  apes,  we  copy  it  faithfully. 

In  declining  the  undertaking  you  so  flatteringly  propose  to  me, 
1  trust  you  will  see  but  an  approvable  caution  for  the  age  of  four 
score  and  two,  to  avoid  exposing  itself  before  the  public.  The 
misfortune  of  a  weakened  mind  is  an  insensibility  of  its  weak- 
ness. Seven  years  ago,  indeed,  I  embarked  in  an  enterprise,  the 
establishment  of  an  University,  which  placed  and  keeps  me  still 
under  the  public  eye.  The  call  was  imperious,  the  necessity 
most  urgent,  and  the  hazard  of  titubation  less,  by  hose  seven 
years,  than  it  now  is.  The  institution  is  at  length  happily  ad- 
Tanced  to  completion,  and  has  commenced  under  auspices  as 
favorable  as  I  could  expect.  I  hope  it  will  prove  a  blessing  to 
my  own  State,  and  not  unuseful  perhaps  to  some  others.  At  all 
hazards,  and  secured  by  the  aid  of  my  able  coadjutors,  I  shall 
continue,  while  I  am  in  being,  to  contribute  to  it  whatever  my 
■weakened  and  weakening  powers  can.  But  assuredly  it  is  the 
last  object  for  which  I  shall  obtrude  myself  on  the  public  obser- 
vation. 

Wishing  anxiously  that  your  great  work  may  obtam  complete 
success,  and  become  an  example  for  the  imitation  and  improve- 
ment of  other  States,  I  pray  you  to  be  assured  of  my  unabated 
friendship  and  respect. 


TO    JUDGE    AUGUSTUS    B.    WOODWAKD. 

MoNTiCKLLO,  April  3,  1825. 

Deah  Sir, — Your  favor  of  March  25th  has  been  duly  received. 
The  fact  is  unquestionable,  that  the  Bill  of  Rights,  and  the  Con- 
stitution of  Virginia,  were  drawn  originally  by  George  Mason, 
one  of  our  really  great  men,  and  of  the  first  order  of  greatness. 
The  history  of  the  Preamble  to  the  latter  is  this :  I  was  then  at 
Philadelphia  with  Congress ;  and  knowing  that  the  Convention 
of  Virginia  was  engaged  in  forming  a  plan  of  government,  I 
turned  my  mind  to  the  same  subject,  and  drew  a  sketch  or  out- 


406  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

line  of  a  Constitution,  with  a  preamble,  which  I  sent  to  Mr,  Pen- 
dleton, president  of  the  convention,  on  the  mere  possibility  that 
it  might  suggest  something  worth  incorporation  intq  that  before 
the  convention.  He  informed  me  afterwards  by  letter,  that  he 
received  it  on  the  day  on  which  the  Committee  of  the  Whole  had 
reported  to  the  House  the  plan  they  had  agreed  to ;  that  that 
had  been  so  long  in  hand,  so  disputed  inch  by  inch,  and  the 
subject  of  so  much  altercation  and  debate ;  that  they  were  worried 
with  the  contentions  it  had  produced,  and  could  not,  from  mere 
lassitude,  have  been  induced  to  open  the  instrument  again ;  but 
that,  being  pleased  with  the  Preamble  to  mine,  they  adopted  it 
in  the  House,  by  way  of  amendment  to  the  Report  of  the  Com- 
mittee ;  and  thus  my  Preamble  became  tacked  to  the  work  of 
George  Mason.  The  Constitution,  with  the  Preamble,  was 
passed  on  the  29th  of  June,  and  the  Committee  of  Congress  had 
only  the  day  before  that  reported  to  that  body  the  draught  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  The  fact  is,  that  that  Preamble 
was  prior  in  composition  to  the  Declaration  ;  and  both  having  the 
same  object,  of  justifying  our  separation  from  Great  Britain,  they 
used  necessarily  the  same  materials  of  justification,  and  hence 
their  similitude. 

Withdrawn  by  age  from  all  other  public  services  and  attentions 
to  public  things,  I  am  closing  the  last  scenes  of  life  by  fashion- 
ing and  fostering  an  establishment  for  the  instruction  of  those 
who  are  to  come  after  us.  I  hope  its  influence  on  their  virtue, 
freedom,  fame  and  happiness,  will  be  salutary  and  permanent. 
The  form  and  distributions  of  its  structure  are  original  and 
unique,  the  architecture  chaste  and  classical,  and  the  whole  well 
worthy  of  attracting  the  curiosity  of  a  visit.  Should  it  so  prove 
to  yourself  at  any  time,  it  will  be  a  great  gratification  to  me  to 
see  you  once  more  at  Monticello  ;  and  I  pray  you  to  be  assured 
of  my  continued  and  high  respect  and  esteem. 


CORRESPOKDENOE.  407 


TO    HENET   LEE,    ESq. 

MoNTicELLo,  May  8,  1826. 

Dear  Sir,—  *******=# 
That  George  Mason  was  author  of  the  bill  of  rights,  and  of  the 
constitution  founded  on  it,  the  evidence  of  the  day  established 
fully  in  my  mind.  Of  the  paper  you  mention,  purporting  to  be 
instructions  to  the  Virginia  delegation  in  Congress,  I  have  no 
recollection.  If  it  were  anything  more  than  a  project  of  some 
private  hand,  that  is  to  say,  had  any  such  instructions  been  ever 
given  by  the  convention,  they  would  appear  in  the  journals, 
■which  we  possess  entire.  But  with  respect  to  our  rights,  and  the 
acts  of  the  British  government  contravening  those  rights,  there 
was  but  one  opinion  on  this  side  of  the  water.  All  American 
whigs  thought  alike  on  these  subjects.  When  forced,  therefore, 
to  resort  to  arms  for  redress,  an  appeal  to  the  tribunal  of  the 
world  was  deemed  proper  for  our  justification.  This  was  the 
object  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  Not  to  find  out  ne\i 
principles,  or  new  arguments,  never  before  thought  of,  not  merely 
to  say  things  which  had  never  been  said  before  ;  but  to  place  be- 
fore mankind  the  common  sense  of  the  subject,  in  terms  so  plain 
and  firm  as  to  command  their  assent,  and  to  justify  ourselves  in 
the  independent  stand  we  are  compelled  to  take.  Neither  aim- 
ing at  originality  of  principle  or  sentiment,  nor  yet  copied  from 
any  particular  and  previous  writing,  it  was  intended  to  be  an  ex- 
pression of  the  American  mind,  and  to  give  to  that  expression  the 
proper  tone  and  spirit  called  for  by  the  occasion.  All  its  author- 
ity rests  then  on  the  harmonizing  sentiments  of  the  day,  whether 
expressed  in  conversation,  in  letters,  printed  essays,  or  in  the  ele- 
mentary books  of  public  right,  as  Aristotle,  Cicero,  Locke,  Sid- 
ney, &c.  The  historical  documents  which  you  mention  as  in 
your  possession,  ought  all  to  be  found,  and  I  am  persuaded  you 
v/-ill  find,  to  be  corroborative  of  the  facts  and  principles  advanced 
in  that  Declaration.  Be  pleased  to  accept  assurances  of  my  great 
esteem  and  respect 


408  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


TO    MISS    WBIGHT. 

MoNTiCELi.0,  August  1,  1 825. 

I  have  duly  received,  dear  Madam,  your,  letter  of  July  26th, 
and  learn  from  it  with  much  regret,  that  Miss  Wright,  your 
sister,  is  so  much  indisposed  as  to  be  obliged  to  visit  our  medic- 
inal springs.  I  wish  she  may  be  fortunate  in  finding  those  which 
may  be  adapted  to  her  case.  We  have  taken  too  little  pains  to 
ascertam  the  properties  of  our  different  mineral  waters,  the  cases 
in  which  they  are  respectively  remedial,  the  proper  process  in 
their  use,  and  other  circumstances  necessary  to  give  us  their  full 
value.  My  own  health  is  very  low,  not  having  been  able  to 
leave  the  house  for  three  months,  and  suffering  much  at  times. 
In  this  state  of  body  and  mind,  your  letter  could  not  have  found 
a  more  inefficient  counsellor,  one  scarcely  able  to  think  or  to 
write.  At  the  age  of  eighty-two,  with  one  foot  in  the  grave, 
and  the  other  uplifted  to  follow  it,  I  do  not  permii  myself  to  take 
part  in  any  new  enterprises,  even  for  bettering  the  condition  of 
man,  not  even  in  the  great  one  which  is  the  subject  of  your 
letter,  and  which  has  been  through  life  that  of  my  greatest  anx- 
ieties. The  march  of  events  has  not  been  such  as  to  render  its 
completion  practicable  within  the  limits  of  time  allotted  to  me  ; 
and  I  leave  its  accomplishment  as  the  work  of  another  genera- 
tion. And  1  am  cheered  when  I  see  that  on  which  it  is  de- 
volved, taking  it  up  with  so  much  good  will,  and  such  minds 
engaged  in  its  encouragement.  The  abolition  of  the  evil  is  not 
impossible  ;  it  ought  never  therefore  to  be  despaired  of.  Every 
plan  should  be  adopted,  every  experiment  tried,  which  may  do 
something  towards  the  ultimate  object.  That  which  you  pro- 
pose is  well  worthy  of  trial.  It  has  succeeded  with  certain  por- 
tions of  our  white  brethren,  under  the  care  of  a  Rapp  and  an 
Ovveu  ;  and  why  may  it  not  succeed  with  the  man  of  color  ?  An 
opinion  is  hazarded  by  some,  but  proved  by  none,  that  moral  ur- 
gencies are  not  sufficient  to  induce  him  to  labor;  that  nothing 
can  do  this  but  physical  coercion.  But  this  is  a  problem  which 
the  present  age  alone  is  prepared  to  solve  by  experiment.'   Ti 


CORRESPONDENCE.  409 

would  be  a  solecism  to  suppose  a  race  of  animals  created,  with- 
out sufficient  foresight  and  energy  to  preserve  their  own  exist- 
ence. It  is  disproved,  too,  by  the  fact  that  they  exist,  and  have 
existed  through  all  the  ages  of  history.  We  are  not  sufficiently 
acquainted  with  all  the  nations  of  Africa,  to  say  that  there  may 
not  be  some  in  which  habits  of  industry  are  established,  and  the 
arts  practised  which  are  necessary  to  *"ender  life  comfortable. 
The  experiment  now  in  progress  in  St.  Domingo,  those  of  Sierra 
Leone  and  Cape  Mesurado,  are  but  beginning.  Your  proposition 
has  its  aspects  of  promise  also  ;  and  should  it  not  answer  fully  to 
calculations  in  figures,  it  may  yet,  in  its  developments,  lead  to 
happy  results.  These;  however,  I  must  leave  to  another  genera- 
tion. The  enterprise  of  a  different,  but  yet  important  character, 
in  which  I  have  embarked  too  late  in  life,  I  find  more  than  suf- 
ficient to  occupy  the  enfeebled  energies  remaining  to  me,  and 
that  to  divert  them  to  other  objects,  would  be  a  desertion  of 
these.  You  are  young,  dear  Madam,  and  have  powers  of  mind 
which  may  do  much  in  exciting  others  in  this  arduous  task.  I 
am  confident  they  will  be  so  exerted,  and  I  pray  to  heaven  for 
their  success,  and  that  you  may  be  rewarded  with  the  blessings 
which  such  efforts  merit. 


TO    JOHN    VAUGHAN,  ESQ. 

MoNTiCELLo,  September  16,  1825. 

Deab  Sik, — I  am  not  able  to  give  you  any  particular  account 
of  the  paper  handed  you  by  Mr.  Lee,  as  being  either  the  original 
or  a  copy  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  sent  by  myself  to 
his  grandfather.  The  draught,  when  completed  by  myself, 
with  a  few  verbal  amendments  by  Dr.  Franklin  and  Mr.  Adams, 
two  members  of  the  committee,  in  their  own  hand-writing,  is 
now  in  my  own  possession,  and  a  fair  copy  of  this  was  reported  to 
tiJe  committee,  passed  by  them  without  amendment,  and  then  re- 
ported to  Congress.  This  letter  should  be  among  the  records 
of  the  old  Congress ;  and  whether  this  or  the  one  from  which  it 


-110  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

was  copied  and  now  in  my  hands,  is  to  be  called  the  original  is 
a  question  of  definition.  To  that  in  my  hands,  if  worth  pre- 
serving, my  relations  with  our  University  gives  irresistible  claims. 
"Whenever,  in  the  course  of  the  composition,  a  copy  became  over- 
charged, and  difficult  to  be  read  with  amendments,  I  copied  it 
fair,  and  when  that  also  was  crowded  with  other  amendments, 
another  fair  copy  was  made,  &c.  These  rough  draughts  1  sent 
to  distant  friends  who  were  anxious  to  know  what  was  passing. 
But  how  many,  and  to  whom,  I  do  not  recollect.  One  sent  to 
Mazzei  was  given  by  him  to  the  Countess  de  Tessie  (aunt  of 
Madame  de  Lafayette)  as  the  original,  and  is  probably  now  in 
the  hands  of  her  family.  Whether  the  paper  sent  to  R.  H.  Lee 
was  one  of  these,  or  whether,  after  the  passage  of  the  instrument, 
I  made  a  copy  for  him,  with  the  amendments  of  Congress,  may, 
I  think,  be  known  from  the  face  of  the  paper.  The  documents 
Mr.  Lee  has  given  you  must  be  of  great  value,  and  until  all  these 
private  hoards  are  made  public,  the  real  history  of  the  revolution 
will  not  be  known. 


TO    DK.    JAMES    MEASE. 

MoNTicKLi.o,  September  26, 18'25. 

Deak  Sir, — ^It  is  not  for  me  to  estimate  the  importance  of 
the  circumstances  concerning  which  your  letter  of  the  8th  makes 
mquiry.  They  prove,  even  in  their  minuteness,  the  sacred  at- 
tachments of  our  fellow  citizens  to  the  event  of  which  the  pa- 
per of  July  4th,  1776,  was  but  the  declaration,  the  genuine  ef- 
fusion of  the  soul  of  our  country  at  that  time.  Small  things 
may,  perhaps,  like  the  relics  of  saints,  help  to  nourish  our  devo- 
tion to  this  holy  bond  of  our  Union,  and  keep  it  longer  alive 
and  warm  in  our  affections.  This  effect  may  give  importance  to 
circumstances,  however  small.  At  the  time  of  writing  that  in- 
strument, I  lodged  in  the  house  of  a  Mr.  Graaf,  a  new  brick 
house,  three  stories  high,  of  which  I  rented  the  second  floor,  con- 
sisting of  a  parlor  and  bed-room,  ready  furnished.     In  that  parlor 


OORRESPONDENOB.  4il 

I  wrote  habitually,  and  in  it  wrote  this  paper,  particularly.  So 
far  I  state  from  written  proofs  in  my  possession.  The  proprietor, 
Graaf,  was  a  young  man,  son  of  a  German,  and  then  newly  mar- 
ried. I  think  he  was  a  bricklayer,  and  that  his  house  was  on 
the  south  side  of  Market  street,  probably  between  Seventh  and 
Eighth  streets,  and  if  not  the  only  house  on  that  part  of  the  street, 
I  am  sure  there  were  few  others  near  it.  I  have  some  idea  that 
it  was  a  corner  house,  but  no  other  recollections  throwing  light 
on  the  question,  or  worth  communication.  I  am  ill,  therefore 
only  add  assurance  of  my  great  respect  and  esteem. 


TO  . 

MoNTiCELLO,  October  25,  1825. 

Deak  Sir, — I  know  not  whether  the  professors  to  whom  an- 
cient and  modern  history  are  assigned  in  the  University,  have  yet 
decided  on  the  course  of  historical  reading  which  they  will  rec- 
ommend to  their  schools.  If  they  have,  I  wish  this  letter  to  be 
considered  as  not  written,  as  their  course,  the  result  of  mature 
consideration,  will  be  preferable  to  anything  I  could  recommend. 
Under  this  uncertainty,  and  the  rather  as  you  are  of  neither  of 
these  schools,  I  may  hazard  some  general  ideas,  to  be  corrected 
by  what  they  may  recommend  hereafter. 

In  all  cases  I  prefer  original  authors  to  compilers.  For  a  course 
of  ancient  history,  therefore,  of  Greece  and  Rome  especially,  I 
should  advise  the  usual  suite  of  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  Xeno- 
phon,  Diodoras,  Livy,  Caesar,  Suetonius,  Tacitus,  and  Dion, 
in  their  originals  if  understood,  and  in  translations  if  not.  For  its 
continuation  to  the  final  destruction  of  the  empire  we  must  then 
be  content  with  Gibbous,  a  compiler,  and  with  Segur,  for  a  ju- 
dicious recapitulation  of  the  whole.  After  this  general  course, 
there  are  a  number  of  particular  histories  filling  up  the  chasms, 
which  may  be  read  at  leisure  in  the  progress  of  life.  Such  is 
Arrian,  2  Curtius,  Poly  bins,  Sallust,  Plutarch,  Dionysius,  Hali- 
carnassus,  Micasi,  &c.     The  ancient  universal  history  should  be 


il2  JEFFERSOK'S    WORKS. 

on  our  shelves  as  a  book  of  general  reference,  the  most  leaVned 
and  most  faithful  perhaps  that  ever  was  written.  Its  style  is  very 
plain  but  perspicuous. 

In  modern  history,  there  are  but  two  nations  with  whose  course 
it  is  interesting  to  us  to  be  intimately  acquainted,  to  wit :  France 
and  England.  For  the  former,  Millot's  General  History  of 
France  may  be  sufficient  to  the  period  when  1  Davila  com- 
mences. He  should  be  followed  by  Perefixe,  Sully,  Voltaire's 
Louis  XIV.  and  XV.,  la  Cretelles  XVIII.'"«  siecle,  Marmontel's 
Regence,  Foulongion's  French  Revolution,  and  Madame  de 
Stael's,  making  up  by  a  succession  of  particular  history,  the  gen- 
eral one  which  they  want. 

Of  England  there  is  as  yet  no  general  history  so  faithful  as 
Rapin's.  He  may  be  followed  by  Ludlow,  Fox,  Belsham,  Hume 
and  Brodie.  Hume's,  were  it  faithful,  would  be  the  finest  piece 
of  history  which  has  ever  been  written  by  man.  Its  unfortunate 
bias  may  be  partly  ascribed  to  the  accident  of  his  having  written 
backwards.  His  maiden  work  was  the  History  of  the  Stuarts. 
It  was  a  first  essay  to  try  his  strength  before  the  public.  And 
whether  as  a_  Scotchman  he  had  really  a  partiality  for  that 
family,  or  thought  that  the  lower-  their  degradation,  the  more 
fame  he  should  acquire  by  raising  them  up  to  sqme  favor,  the 
object  of  his  work  was  an  apology  for  them.  He  spared  no- 
thing, therefore,  to  wash  them  white,  and  to  palliate  their  mis- 
government.  For  this  purpose  he  suppressed  truths,  advanced 
falsehoods,  forged  authorities,  and  falsified  records.  All  this  is 
proved  on  him  unanswerably  by  Brodie.  But  so  bewitching  was 
his  style  and  manner,  that  his  readers  were  unwilling  to  doubt 
anything,  swallowed  everything,  and  all  England  became  tories 
by  the  magic  of  his  art.  His  pen  revolutionized  the  public  sen- 
timent of  that  country  more  completely  than  the  standing  armies 
could  ever  have  done,  which  were  so  much  dreaded  and  depre- 
cated by  the  patriots  of  that  day. 

Having  succeeded  so  eminently  in  the  acquisition  of  fortune 
and  fame  by  this  work,  he  undertook  the  history  of  the  two  pre- 
ceding  dynasties,  the  Plantagenets  and  Tudors.     It  was  all-im- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  413 

portaiit  in  this  second  work,  to  maintain  the  thesis  of  the  first, 
that  "  it  was  the  people  who  encroached  on  the  sovereign,  not 
the  sovereign  who  usurped  on  the  rights  of  the  people."  And, 
again,  chapter  53d,  "  the  grievances  under  which  the  English 
labored  [to  wit :  whipping,  pillorying,  cropping,  imprisoning, 
fining,  &c.,J  when  considered  in  themselves,  without  regard  to 
the  constitution,  scarcely  deserve  the  name,  nor  were  they  either 
burthensome  on  the  people's  properties,  or  anywise  shocking  to 
the  natural  humanity  of  mankind."  During  the  constant  wars, 
civil  and  foreign,  which  prevailed  while  these  two  families  occu- 
pied the  throne,  it  was  not  difficult  to  find  abundant  instances 
of  practices  the  most  despotic,  as  are  wont  to  occur  in  times 
of  violence.  To  make  this  second  epoch  support  the  third, 
therefore,  required  but  a  little  garbling  of  authorities.  And  it 
then  remained,  by  a  third  work,  to  make  of  the  whole  a  com- 
plete history  of  England,  on  the  principles  on  which  he  had  ad- 
vocated that  of  the  Stuarts.  This  would  comprehend  the  Saxon 
and  Norman  conquests,  the  former  exhibiting  the  genuine  form 
and  political  principles  of  the  people  constituting  the  nation,  and 
founded  in  the  rights  of  man ;  the  latter  built  on  conquest  and 
physical  force,  not  at  all  affecting  moral  rights,  nor  even  assented 
to  by  the  free  will  of  the  vanquished.  The  battle  of  Hastings, 
indeed,  was  lost,  but  the  natural  rights  of  the  nation  were  not 
staked  on  the  event  of  a  single  battle.  Their  will  to  recover  the 
Saxon  constitution  continued  unabated,  and  was  at  the  bottom 
of  all  the  unsuccessful  insurrections  which  succeeded  in  subse- 
quent times.  The  victors  and  vanquished  continued  in  a  state 
of  living  hostility,  and  the  nation  may  still  say,  after  losing  the 
battle  of  Hastings, 

"  What  though  the  field  is  lost  ? 
AU  is  not  lost ;  the  unconquerable  will 
And  study  of  revenge,  immortal  hate 
And  courage  never  to  submit  or  yield." 

The  government  of  a  nation  may  be  usurped  by  the  forcible 
intrusion  of  an  individual  into  the  throne.     But  to  conquer  its  will. 


414  JEFFERSON'S    'WOEKS 

so  as  to  rest  the  right  on  that,  the  only  legitimate  basis,  require^ 
long  acquiescence  and  cessation  of  all  opposition.  The  whig' 
historians  of  England,  therefore,  have  always  gone  back  to  the 
Saxon  period  for  the  true  principles  of  their  constitution,  while 
the  tories  and  Hume,  their  CoryphEeus,  date  it  from  the  Norman 
concjnest,  and  hence  conclude  that  the  continual  claim  by  the  na- 
tion of  the  good  old  Saxon  laws,  and  the  struggles  to  recover 
them,  were  "  encroachments  of  the  people  on  the  crown,  and  not 
usurpations  of  the  crown  on  the  people."  Hume,  with  Brodie, 
should  be  the  last  histories  of  England  to  be  read.  If  first  read, 
Hume  makes  an  English  tory,  from  whence  it  is  an  easy  step  to 
American  toryism.  But  there  is  a  history,  by  Baxter,  in  which,, 
abridging  somewhat  by  leaving  out  some  entire  incidents  as  less 
interesting  now  than  when  Hume  wrote,  he  has  given  the  rest 
in  the  identical  words  of  Hume,  except  that  when  he  comes  to 
a  fact  falsified,  he  states  it  truly,  and  when  to  a  suppression  of 
truth,  he  supplies  it,  never  otherwise  changing  a  word.  It  is,  in 
fact,  an  editic  expurgation  of  Hume.  Those  who  shrink  from 
the  volume  of  Rapin,  may  read  this  first,  and  from  this  lay  a  first 
foundation  in  a  basis  of  truth. 

For  modern  continental  history,  a  very  general  idea  may  be  first 
aimed  at,  leaving  for  future  and  occasional  reading  the  particular 
histories  of  such  countries  as  may  excite  curiosity  at  the  time. 
This  may  be  obtained  from  Mollet's  Northern  Antiquities,  Vol. 
Esprit  et  Moeurs  des  Nations,  Millet's  Modern  History,  Rus- 
sel's  Modern  Europe,  Hallam's  Middle  Ages,  and  Robertson's 
Charles  V. 

You  ask  what  book  I  would  recommend  to  be  first  read  in 
law.  I  am  very  glad  to  find  from  a  conversation  with  Mr.  Gil- 
mer, that  he  considers  Coke  Littleton,  as  methodized  by  Thomas, 
as  unquestionably  the  best  elementary  work,  and  the  one  which 
will  be  the  text  book  of  his  school.  It  is  now  as  agreeable  read- 
ing as  Blackstone,  and  much  more  profound.  I  pray  you  to  con- 
sider this  hasty  and  imperfect  sketch  as  intended  merely  to  prove 
ray  wish  to  be  useful  to  you,  and  that  with  it  you  will  accept 
the  assurance  of  my  esteem  and  respect. 


CORRESPONDENCE.  415 


TO    THE    HONOBABLT;    J.    EVELYN    DENISON,    M.    P. 

MoNTicELLo,  November  9,  1825. 

Dear  Sir, — Your  favor  of  July  30th  was  diily  received,  and 
we  have  now  at  hand  the  books  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to 
send  to  our  University.  They  are  truly  acceptable  in  them- 
selves, for  we  might  have  been  years  not  knowing  of  their  ex- 
istence ;  but  give  the  greater  pleasure  as  evidence  of  the  interest 
you  have  taken  in  our  infant  institution.  It  is  going  on  as  suc- 
cessfully as  we  could  have  expected  ;  and  I  have  no  reason  to 
regret  the  measure  taken  of  procuring  Professors  from  abroad 
where  science  is  so  much  ahead  of  us.  You  witnessed  some  of 
the  puny  squibs  of  which  I  was  the  butt  on  that  account.  They 
were  probably  from  disappointed  candidates,  whose  unworthiness 
had  occasioned  their  applications  to  be  passed  over.  The  meas- 
ure has  been  generally  approved  in  the  South  and  West ;  and  by 
all  liberal  minds  in  the  North.  It  has  been  peculiarly  fortunate, 
too,  that  the  Professors  brought  from  abroad  were  as  happy  se- 
lections as  could  have  been  hoped,  as  well  for  their  qualifications 
in  science  as  correctness  and  amiableness  of  character.  I  think 
the  example  will  be  followed,  and  that  it  cannot  fail  to  be  one 
of  the  efficacious  means  of  promoting  that  cordial  good  will, 
which  it  is  so  much  the  interest  of  both  nations  to  cherish. 
These  teachers  can  never  utter  an  unfriendly  sentiment  towards 
their  native  country  ;  and  those  into  whom  their  instructions  will 
be  infused,  are  not  of  ordinary  significance  only :  they  are  ex- 
actly the  persons  who  are  to  succeed  to  the  government  of  our 
country,  and  to  rule  its  future  enmities,  its  friendships  and  for- 
tunes. As  it  is  our  interest  to  receive  instruction  through  this 
channel,  so  I  think  it  is  yours  to  furnish  it ;  for  these  two  na- 
tions holding  cordially  together,  have  nothing  to  fear  from  the 
united  world.  They  will  be  the  models  for  regenerating  the 
condition  of  man,  the  sources  from  which  representative  govern- 
ment is  to  flow  over  the  whole  earth. 

I  learn  from  you  with  great  pleasure,  that  a  taste  is  reviving 
in  Englani  for  the  recovery  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  dialect  of  oui 


416  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

language ;  for  a  mere  dialect  it  is,  as  much  as  those  of  Piers 
Plowman,  Gower,  Douglas,  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakspeare,  Mil- 
ton, for  even  much  of  Milton  is  already  antiquated.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  is  only  the  earliest  we  possess  of  the  many  shades  of  mu- 
tation by  which  the  language  has  tapered  down  to  its  modern 
form.  Vocabularies  we  need  for  each  of  these  stages  from  Som- 
ner  to  Bailey,  but  not  grammars  for  each  or  any  of  them.  The 
grammar  has  changed  so  little,  in  the  descent  from  the  earliest, 
to  the  present  form,  that  a  little  observation  suffices  to  under- 
stand its  variations.  We  are  greatly  indebted  to  the  worthies 
who  have  preserved  the  Anglo-Saxon  form,  from  Doctor  Hickes 
down  to  Mr.  Bosworth.  Had  they  not  given  to  the  public  what 
we  possess  through  the  press,  that  dialect  would  by  this  time 
have  been  irrecoverably  lost.  I  think  it,  however,  a  misfortune 
that  they  have  endeavored  to  give  it  too  much  of  a  learned  form, 
to  mount  it  on  all  the  scaffolding  of  the  Greek  and  Latin,  to  load 
it  with  their  genders,  numbers,  cases,  declensions,  conjugations, 
&c.  Strip  it  of  these  embarrassments,  vest  it  in  the  Roman  type 
which  we  have  adopted  instead  of  our  English  black  letter,  re- 
form its  uncouth  orthography,  and  assimilate  its  pronunciation, 
as.  much  as  maybe,  to  the  present  English,  just  as  we  do  in 
reading  Piers  Plowman  or  Chaucer,  and  with  the  cotemporary 
vocabulary  for  the  few  lost  words,  we  understand  it  as  we  do 
them.  For  example,  the  Anglo-Saxon  text  of  the  Lord's  prayer, 
as  given  us  6th  Matthew,  ix.,  is  spelt  and  written  thus,  in  the 
equivalent  Roman  type  :  "  Faeder  ure  thee  the  eart  in  heafenum. 
si  thin  nama  ychalgod.  To  becume  thin  rice.  Gerrurthe  thin 
willa  on  eartham,  swa  swa  on  heofenum.  Ume  doeghw  amli 
can  hlaf  syle  us  to  doeg.  And  forgyfus  ure  gyltas,  swa  swa  we 
forgifath  urum  gyltendum.  And  ne  ge-loedde  thu  us  on  costnunge, 
ae  alys  us  of  yfele."  I  should  spell  and  pronounce  thus: 
"  Father  our,  thou  tha  art  in  heavenum,  si  thine  name  y-hal- 
lowed.  Come  thin  ric-y-wurth  thine  will  on  eartham,  so  so  on 
heavenum :  ourn  daynhamlican  loaf  sell  us  to-day,  and  forgive 
us  our  guilts  so  so  we  forgiveth  ourum  guiltendum.  And  no 
y-lead  thou  us  on  costnunge,  ac  a-lease  us  of  evil."     And  here  it 


COREEPPONDENOE.  417 

is  to  be  observed  by-the-bye,  that  there  is  but  the  single  word 
"  temptation"  in  our  present  version  of  this  prayer  that  is  not 
Anglo-Saxon  ;  for  the  word  "  trespasses"  taken  from  the  French, 
(„tf>n\rii,un,  in  the  original)  might  as  well  have  been  translated  by 
the  Anglo-Saxon  "  guilts." 

The  learned  apparatus  in  which  Dr.  Hickes  and  his  successors 
have  muffled  our  Anglo-Saxon,  is  what  has  frightened  us  from 
encountering  it.  The  simplification  I  propose  may,  on  the  con- 
trary, make  it  a  regular  part  of  our  common  English  education. 

So  little  reading  and  writing  was  there  among  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  ancestors  of  that  day,  that  they  had  no  fixed  orthography. 
To  produce  a  given  sound,  every  one  jumbled  the  letters  to- 
gether, according  to  his  unlettered  notion  of  their  power,  and  all 
jumbled  them  diflferently,  just  as  would  be  done  at  this  day, 
were  a  dozen  peasants,  who  have  learnt  the  alphabet,  but  have 
never  read,  desired  to  write  the  Lord's  prayer.  Hence  the  varied 
modes  of  spelling  by  which  the  Anglo-Saxons  meant  to  express 
the  same  sound.  The  word  many,  for  example,  was  spelt  in 
twenty  different  ways ;  yet  we  cannot  suppose  they  were  twenty 
different  words,  or  that  they  had  twenty  different  ways  of  pro- 
nouncing the  same  word.  The  Anglo-Saxon  orthography,  then, 
is  not  an  exact  representation  of  the  sounds  meant  to  be  con- 
veyed. We  must  drop  in  pronunciation  the  superfluous  conso- 
nants, and  give  to  the  remaining  letters  their  present  English 
sound ;  because,  not  knowing  the  true  one,  the  present  enuncia- 
tion is  as  likely  to  be  right  as  any  other,  and  indeed  more  so, 
and  facilitates  the  acquisition  of  the  language. 

It  is  much  to  be  wished  that  the  publication  of  the  pres- 
ent county  dialects  of  England  should  go  on.  It  will  restore  to 
us  our  language  in  all  its  shades  of  variation.  It  will  incorporate 
into  the  present  one  all  the  riches  of  our  ancient  dialects ;  and 
what  a  store  this  will  be,  may  be  seen  by  running  the  eye  over 
the  county  glossaries,  and  observing  the  words  we  have  lost  by 
abandonment  and  disuse,  which  in  sound  and  sense  are  inferior 
to  nothing  we  have  retained.  When  thede  local  vocabularies  are 
published  and  digested  together  into  a  single  one,  it  is  probable 
VOL.  VII.  '27 


418  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

we  shall  find  that  there  is  not  a  word  in  Shakspeare  which  is  not 
now  in  use  in  some  of  the  counties  in  England,  from  whence  we 
may  obtain  its  true  sense.  And  what  an  exchange  will  their  re- 
covery be  for  the  volumes  of  idle  commentaries  and  conjectures 
with  which  that' divine  poet  has  been  masked  and  metamor- 
phosed. We  shall  find  in  him  new  sublimities  which  we  had 
never  tasted  before,  and  find  beauties  in  our  ancient  poets  which 
are  lost  to  us  now.  It  is  not  that  I  am  merely  an  enthusiast  for 
Palseology.  I  set  equal  value  on  the  l«autiful  engraftments  we 
have  borrowed  from  Greece  and  Rome,  and  I  am  equally  a  friend 
to  the  encouragement  of  a  judicious  neology ;  a  language  cannot 
be  too  rich.  The  more  copious,  the  more  susceptible  of  embel- 
lishment it  will  become.  There  are  several  things  wanting  to 
promote  this  improvement.  To  reprint  the  Saxon  books  in 
modern  type  ;  reform  their  orthography ;  publish  in  the  same  way 
the  treasures  still  existing  in  manuscript.  And,  more  than  all 
things,  we  want  a  dictionary  on  the  plan  of  Stephens  or  Scapula, 
in  which  the  Saxon  root,  placed  alphabetically,  shall  be  followed 
by  all  its  cognate  modifications  of  nouns,  verbs,  «S6c.,  whether 
Anglo-Saxon,  or  found  in  the  dialects  of  subsequent  ages.  We 
want,  too,  an  elaborate  history  of  the  English  language.  In  time 
our  country  may  be  able  to  co-operate  with  you  in  these  labors, 
of  common  advantage,  but  as  yet  it  is  too  much  a  blank,  calhng 
for  other  and  more  pressing  attentions.  We  have  too  much  to 
do  in  the  improvements  of  which  it  is  susceptible,  and  which  are 
deemed  more  immediately  useful.  Literature  is  not  yet  a  dis- 
tinct profession  with  us.  Now  and  then  a  strong  mind  arises, 
and  at  its  intervals  of  leisure  from  business,  emits  a  flash  of  light. 
But  the  first  object  of  young  societies  is  bread  and  covering ; 
science  is  but  secondary  and  subsequent. 

I  owe  apology  for  this  long  letter.  .  It  must  be  found  in  the 
circumstance  of  its  subject  having  made  an  interesting  part  in 
the  tenor  of  your  letter,  and  in  my  attachment  to  it.  It  is  a 
hobby  which  too  often  runs  away  with  me  where  I  meant  not  to 
give  up  the  rein.  Our  youth  seem  disposed  to  mount  it  with 
me,  and  to  begin  their  course  where  mine  is  ending. 


OOREESPOKDENOE.  419 

Our  family  recollects  with  pleasure  the  visit  with  which  you 
favored  us ;  and  join  me  in  assuring  you  of  our  friendly  and  re- 
spectful recollections,  and  of  the  gratification  it  will  ever  be  to  us 
to  hear  of  your  health  and  welfare. 


TO    MR.    LEWIS    M.    WISS. 

MoNTicELLo,  November  27,  1825. 

Sir, — Disqualified  by  age  and  1  health  from  undertaking 
minute  investigations,  I  find  it  will  be  easier  for  me  to  state  to 
you  my  proposition  of  a  lock-dock,  for  laying  up  vessels,  high 
and  dry,  than  to  investigate  yours.  You  will  then  judge  for 
yourself  whether  any  part  of  mine  has  anticipated  any  part  of 
yours. 

While  I  was  at  Washington,  in  the  administration  of  the  gov- 
ernment. Congress  was  much  divided  in  opinion  on  the  subject 
of  a  navy,  a  part  of  them  wishing  to  go  extensively  into  prepara- 
tion of  a  fleet,  another  part  opposed  to  it,  on  the  objection  that 
the  repairs  and  preservation  of  a  ship,  even  idle  in  harbor,  in  ten 
or  twelve  years,  amount  to  her  original  cost.  It  has  been  esti- 
mated in  England,  that  if  they  could  b.e  sure  of  peace  a  dozen 
years  it  would  be  cheaper  for  them  to  burn  their  fleet,  and  build 
a  new  one  when  wanting,  than  to  keep  the  old  one  in  repair 
during  that  term.  I  learnt  that,  in  Venice,  there  were  then  ships, 
lying  on  their  original  stocks,  ready  for  launching  at  any  mo- 
ment, which  had  been  so  for  eighty  years,  and  were  still  in  a 
state  of  perfect  preservation ;  and  that  this  was  efiected  by  dis- 
posing of  them  in  docks  pumped  dry,  and  kept  so  by  constant 
pumping.  It  occurred  to  me  that  this  expense  of  constant  pump- 
ing might  be  saved  by  combining  a  lock  with  the  common  wet 
dock,  wherever  there  was  a  running  stream  of  water,  the  bed  of 
which,  within  a  reasonable  distance,  was  of  a  sufiicient  height 
above  the  high-water  level  of  the  harbor.  This  was  the  case  at 
the  navy-yard,  on  the  eastern  branch  at  Washington,  the  high- 
water  line  of  which  was  seventy-eight  feet  lower  than  the  groimd 


420  JEFFERSOK'S    WOEKS. 

on  which  the  Capitol  stands,  and  to  which  it  was  found  that  the 
water  of  the  Tyber  creek  could  be  brought  for  watering  the  city. 
My  proposition  then  was  as  follows:  Let  a  6  be  the  high-water 
level  of  the  harbor,  and  the  vessel  to  be  laid  up  draw  eighteen 
feet  water.  Make  a  chamber  A  twenty  feet  deep  below  high 
water  and  twenty  feet  high  above  it,  as  c  d  ef,  and  at  the  upper 
end  make  another  chamber,  B, 

« f 

SI 


B 


h 


the  bottom  of  which  should  be  in  the  high-water  level,  and  the 
tops  twenty  feet  above  that,  g  h  is  the  water  of  the  Tyber. 
When  the  vessel  is  to  be  introduced,  open  the  gate  at  c  b  a.  The 
tide  water  rises  in  the  chamber  A  to  the  level  b  i,  and  floats  the 
vessel  in  with  it.  Shut  the  gate  c  b  d  and  open  that  of  /  i.  The 
water  of  the  Tyber  fills  both  chambers  to  the  level  cfg,  and  the 
vessel  floats  into  the  chamber  B  ;  then  opening  both  gates  c  b  d 
and  fi,  the  water  flows  out,  and  the  vessel  settles  down  on  the 
stays  previously  prepared,  at  the  bottom  i  h  to  receive  her.  The 
gate  at  g  h  must  of  course  bo  closed,  and  the  water  of  the  feed- 
ing stream  be  diverted  elsewhere.  The  chamber'  B  is  to  have  a 
roof  over  it  of  the  construction  of  that  over  the  meal  market  at 
Paris,  except  that  that  is  hemispherical,  this  semi-cylindrical. 
For  this  construction  see  Delenne's  architecture,  whose  invention 
it  was.  The  diameter  of  the  dome  of  the  meal  market  is  con- 
siderably over  one  hundred  feet. 

It  will  be  seen  at  once,  that  instead  of  making  the  chamber  B 
of  sufficent  width  and  length  for  a  single  vessel  only,  it  may  be 
widened  to  whatever  span  the  semi-circular  framing  of  the  roof 
can  be  trusted,  and  to  whatever  length  you  please,  so  as  to  admit 
two  or  more  vessels  in  breadth,  and  as  many  in  length  as  the 
iocalities  render  expedient. 

I  had  a  model  of  this  lock-dock  made  and  exhibited  in  the 


CORRESPONDENCE.  421 

President's  house,  during  the  session  of  Congress  at  which  it  was 
proposed.  But  the  advocates  for  a  navy  did  not  fancy  it,  and 
those  opposed  to  the  building  of  ships  altogether,  were  equally 
indisposed  to  provide  protection  for  them.  Ridicule  was  also  re- 
sorted to,  the  ordinary  substitute  for  reason,  when  that  fails,  and 
the  proposition  was  past  over.  I  then  thought  and  still  think  the 
measure  wise,  to  have  a  proper  number  of  vessels  always  read  y 
to  be  launched,  with  nothing  unfinished  about  them,  except  the 
planting  their  masts,  which  must  of  necessity  be  omitted,  to  be 
brought  under  a  roof.  Having  no  view  in  this  proposition  but 
to  combine  for  the  public  a  provision  for  defence,  with  economy 
in  its  preservation,  I  have  thought  no  more  of  it  since.  And  if 
any  of  my  ideas  anticipated  yours,  you  are  welcome  to  appropri- 
ate them  to  yourself,  without  objection  on  my  part,  and,  with 
this  assurance,  I  pray  you  to  accept  that  of  my  best  wishes  and 
respects. 


TO    * 

MoNTiCELio.  December  18,  1825. 

Dear  Sir, — Your  letters  are  always  welcome,  the  last  more 
than  all  others,  its  subject  being  one  of  the  dearest  to  my  heart. 
To  my  grand-daughter  your  commendations  cannot  fail  to  be 
an  object  of  high  ambition,  as  a  certain  passport  to  the  good 
opinion  of  the  world.  If  she  does  not  cultivate  them  with  assi- 
duity and  affection,  she  will  illy  fulfil  my  parting  injunctions.  I 
trust  she  will  merit  a  continuance  of  your  favor,  and  find  in  her 
new  situation  the  general  esteem  she  so  happily  possessed  in  the 
society  she  left.  You  tell  me  she  repeated  to  you  an  expression 
of  mine,  that  I  should  be  willing  to  go  again  over  the  scenes  of 
past  life.  I  should  not  be  unwilling,  without,  however,  wishing 
it ;  and  why  not  ?  I  have  enjoyed  a  greater  share  of  health  than 
falls  to  the  lot  of  most  men  ;  my  spirits  have  never  failed  me  ex- 
cept under  those  paroxysms  of  grief  which  you,  as  well  as  my- 
self, have  experienced  in  every  form,  and  with  good  health  and 
good  spirits,  the  pleasures  surely  outweigh  the  pains  of  life. 

*  Address  lost. 


422  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Why  not,  then,  taste  them  again,  fat  and  lean  together  ?  Were 
I  indeed  permitted  to  cut  off  from  the  train  the  last  seven  years, 
the  halance  would  he  much  in  favor  of  treading  the  ground  over 
again.  Being  at  that  period  in  the  neighborhood  of  our  warm 
springs,  and  well  in  health,  I  wished  to  be  better,  and  tried  them. 
They  destroyed,  in  a  great  degree,  my  internal  organism,  and  I 
have  never  since  had  a  moment  of  perfect  health.  I  have  now 
been  eight  months  confined  almost  constantly  to  the  house,  with 
now  and  then  intervals  of  a  few  days  on  which  I  could  get  on 
horseback. 

I  presume  you  have  received  a  copy  of  the  life  of  Richard  H. 
Lee,  from  his  grandson  of  the  same  name,  author  of  the  work. 
You  and  1  know  that  he  merited  much  during  the  revolution. 
Eloqii^nt,  bold,  and  ever  watchful  at  his  post,  of  which  his  bi- 
■  ogra^er  omits  no  proof.  I  am  not  certain  whether  the  friends 
of  George  Mason,  of  Patrick  Henry,  yourself,  and  even  of  Gen- 
eral Washington,  may  not  reclaim  some  feathers  of  the  plumage 
given  him,  noble  as  was  his  proper  and  original  coat.  But  on 
this  subject  I  will  anticipate  your  own  judgment. 

I  learn  with  sincere  pleasure  that  you  have  experienced  lately 
a  great  renovation  of  your  health.  That  it  may  continue  to  the 
ultimate  period  of  your  wishes  is  the  sincere  prayer  of  usque  ad 
eras  amicissimi  tui. 


TO    JAMES    MADISON. 

Monti OKLLO,  December  24.  1825. 

Dear  Sih, — I  have  for  some  time  considered  the  question  of 
internal  improvement  as  desperate.  The  torrent  of  general  opin- 
ion sets  so  strongly  in  favor  of  it  as  to  be  irresistible.  And  1 
suppose  that  even  the  opposition  in  Congress  will  hereafter  be 
feeble  and  formal,  unless  something  can  be  done  which  may  give 
a  gleam  of  encouragement  to  our  friends,  or  alarm  their  oppo- 
nents in  their  fancied  security.  I  learn  from  Richmond  that 
those  who  think  with  us  there  are  in  a  state  of  perfect  dismay, 


CORRESPONDENCE.  423 

uot  knowing  what  to  do  or  what  to  propose.  Mr.  Goi'don,  our 
representative,  particularly,  has  written  to  me  in  very  desponding 
terms,  not  disposed  to  yield  indeed,  but  pressing  for  opinions  and 
advice  on  the  subject.  I  have  no  doubt  you  are  pressed  in  the 
same  way,  and  I  hope  you  have  devised  and  recommended  some- 
thing to  them.  If  you  have,  stop  here  and  read  no  more,  but 
consider  all  that  follows  as  non-avemie.  I  shall  be  better  satis- 
fied to  adopt  implicitly  anything  which  you  may  have  advised, 
than  anything  occurring  to  myself.  For  I  have  long  ceased  to 
think  on  subjects  of  this  kind,  and  pay  little  attention  to  public 
proceedings.  But  if  you  have  done  nothing  in  it,  then  I  risk  for 
your  consideration  what  has  occurred  to  me,  and  is  expressed  in 
the  enclosed  paper.*  Bailey's  propositions,  which  came  to  hand 
since  I  wrote  the  paper,  and  which  I  suppose  to  have  come  from 
the  President  himself,  show  a  little  hesitation  in  the  purposes  of 
his  party  ;  and  in  that  state  of  mind,  a  bolt  shot  critically  may  de- 
cide the  contest  by  its  effect  on  the  less  bold.  The  olive  branch 
held  out  to  them  at  this  moment  may  be  accepted,  and  the  con- 
stitution thus  saved  at  a  moderate  sacrifice.  I  say  nothing  of  the 
paper,  which  will  explain  itself.  The  following  heads  of  con- 
sideration, or  some  of  them,  may  weigh  in  its  favor  : 

It  may  intimidate  the  wavering.  It  may  break  the  western 
coalition,  by  offering  the  same  thing  in  a  different  form.  It  will 
be  viewed  with  favor  in  contrast  with  the  Georgia  opposition  and 
fear  of  strengthening  that.  It  will  be  an  example  of  a  temperate 
mode  of  opposition  in  future  and  similar  cases.  It  will  delay  the 
measure  a  year  at  least.  It  will  give  us  the  chance  of  better 
times  and  of  intervening  accidents  ;  and  in  no  way  place  us  in 
a  worse  than  our  present  situation.  I  do  not  dwell  on  these  top- 
ics ;  your  mind  will  develop  them. 

The  first  question  is,  whether  you  approve  of  doing  anything 
of  the  kind.  If  not,  send  it  back  to  me,  and  it  shall  be  sup- 
pressed ;  for  I  would  not  hazard  so  important  a  measure  against 

•See  under  head  of  "  Miscellaneous  Papers,"  the  paper  here  alluded  to,  entitled, 
"The  sblemn  Declaration  and  Protest  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Virginia  on  the 
principles  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  of  America,  and  on  the  viola 
tions  of  them."' 


424  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

youi-  opinion,  nor  even  without  its  support.  If  you  think  it  may 
be  a  canvass  on  which  to  put  something  good,  make  what  altera- 
tions you  please,  and  I  will  forward  it  to  Gordon,  under  the  most 
sacred  injunctions  that  it  shall  be  so  used  as  that  not  a  shadow  of 
suspicion  shall  fall  on  you  or  myself,  that  it  has  come  from  either 
of  us.  But  what  you  do,  do  as  promptly  as  your  convenience 
will  admit,  lest  it  should  be  anticipated  by  something  worse. 
Ever  and  affectionately  yours. 


TO    WILLIAM   B.    GILES. 

MoKTioKLi.o,  December  25,  1825. 

Dear  Sir, — Your  favor  of  the  15th  was  received  four  days  ago. 
It  found  me  engaged  in  what  I  could  not  lay  aside  till  this  day. 

Far  advanced  in  my  eighty-third  year,  worn  down  with  in- 
firmities which  have  confined  me  almost  entirely  to  the  house 
for  seven  or  eight  months  past,  it  afflicts  me  much  to  receive  ap- 
peals to  my  memory  for  transactions  so  far  back  as  that  which 
is  the  subject  of  your  letter.  My  memory  is  indeed  become 
almost  a  blank,  of  which  no  better  proof  can  probably  be  given 
you  than  by  my  solemn  protestation,  that  I  have  not  the  least 
recollection  of  your  intervention  between  Mr.  John  Q,.  Adams 
and  myself,  in  what  passed  on  the  subject  of  the  embargo.  Not 
the  slightest  trace  of  it  remains  in  my  mind.  Yet  I  have  no 
doubt  of  the  exactitude  of  the  statement  in  your  letter.  And 
the  less,  as  I  recollect  the  interview  with  Mr.  Adams,  to  which 
the  previous  communications  which  had  passed  between  him 
aad  yourself  were  prol.ably  and  naturally  the  preliminary.  That 
interview  I  remember  well ;  not  indeed  in  the  very  words  which 
passed  between  us,  but  in  their  substance,  which  was  of  a  char- 
acter too  awful,  too  deeply  engraved  in  my  mind,  and  influencing 
too  materially  the  course  I  had  to  pursue,  ever  to  be  forgotten. 
Mr.  Adams  called  on  me  pending  the  embargo,  and  while  en- 
deavors were  making  to  obtain  its  repeal.  He  made  some  apol- 
ogies for  the  call,  on  the  ground  of  our  not  being  then  in  the 
habit  of  confidential  communications,  but  that  that  which  he  had 


CORRESPONDENCE  425 

then  to  make,  involved  too  seriously  the  interest  of  our  country 
not  to  overrule  all  other  considerations  with  him,  and  make  it 
his  duty  to  reveal  it  to  myself  particularly.  I  assured  him  there 
was  no  occasion  for  any  apology  for  his  visit ;  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, his  communications  would  be  thankfully  received,  and 
would  add  a  confirmation  the  more  to  my  entire  confidence  in 
the  rectitude  and  patriotism  of  his  conduct  and  principles.  He 
spoke  then  of  the  dissatisfaction  of  the  eastern  portion  of  our 
confederacy  with  the  restraints  of  the  embargo  then  existing, 
and  their  restlessness  under  it.  That  there  was  nothing  which 
might  not  be  attempted,  to  rid  themselves  of  it.  That  he  had 
information  of  the  most  unquestionable  certainty,  that  certain 
citizens  of  the  eastern  States  ^l  think  he  named  Massachusetts 
particularly)  were  in  negotiation  with  agents  of  the  British  gov- 
ernment, the  object  of  which  was  an  agreement  that  the  New 
England  States  should  take  no  further  part  in  the  war  then  going 
on  ;  that,  without  formally  declaring  their  separation  from  the 
Union  of  the  States,  they  should  withdraw  from  all  aid  and 
obedience  to  them ;  that  their  navigation  and  commerce  should 
be  free  from  restraint  and  interruption  by  the  British  ;  that  they 
should  be  considered  and  treated  by  them  as  neutrals,  and  as  such 
might  conduct  themselves  towards  both  parties  ;  and,  at  the  close 
of  the  war,  be  at  liberty  to  rejoin  the  confederacy.  He  assured 
me  that  there  was  eminent  danger  that  the  conventioii  would 
take  place ;  that  the  temptations  were  such  as  might  debauch 
many  from  their  fidelity  to  the  Union ;  and  that,  to  enable  its 
friends  to  make  head  against  it,  the  repeal  of  the  embargo  was 
absolutely  necessary.  I  expressed  a  just  sense  of  the  merit  of 
this  information,  and  of  the  importance  of  the  disclosure  to  the 
safety  and  even  the  salvation  of  our  country  ;  and  however  re- 
luctant I  was  to  abandon  the  measure,  (a  measure  which  perse- 
vered in  a  little  longer,  we  had  subsequent  and  satisfactory  assur- 
ance would  have  effected  its  object  completely,)  from  that  mo- 
ment, and  influenced  by  that  information,  I  saw  the  necessity  of 
abandoning  it,  and  instead  of  effecting  our  purpose  by  this  peace- 
ful weapon,  we  must  fight  it  out,  or  break  the  Union.     I  then 


426  JEFFEESON'5    WORKS. 

recommended  to  yield  to  the  necessity  of  a  repeal  of  the  em- 
bargo, and  to  endeavor  to  supply  its  place  by  the  best  substitute, 
in  which  they  could  procure  a  general  concurrence. 

I  cannot  too  often  repeat,  that  this  statement  is  not  pretended 
to  be  in  the  very  words  which  passed  ;  that  it  only  gives  faith- 
fully the  impression  remaining  on  my  mind.  The  very  words 
of  a  conversation  are  too  transient  and  fugitive  to  be  so  long  re- 
tamed  in  remembrance.  But  the  substance  was  too  important  to 
be  forgotten,  not  only  from  the  revolution  of  measures  it  obliged 
me  to  adopt,  but  also  from  the  renewals  of  it  in  my  memory  on  the 
frequent  occasions  I  have  had  of  doing  justice  to  Mr.  Adams,  by 
repeating  this  proof  of  his  fidelity  to  his  country,  and  of  his  su- 
periority over  all  ordinary  considerations  when  the  safety  of  that 
was  brought  into  question. 

With  this  best  exertion  of  a  waning  memory  which  I  can 
command,  accept  assurances  of  my  constant  and  aifectionate 
friendship  and  respect. 


TO    WILLIAM    B.    GILES. 

MoNTioELi.o,  Deeembei'  26,  1825. 

Deab  Sib, — I  wrote  you  a  letter  yesterday,  of  which  you  will 
be  free  to  make  what  use  you  please.  This  will  contain  matters 
not  intended  for  the  public  eye.  I  see,  as  you  do,  and  with  the 
deepest  affliction,  the  rapid  strides  with  which  the  federal  branch 
of  our  government  is  advancing  towards  the  usurpation  of  all  the 
rights  reserved  to  the  States,  and  the  consolidation  in  itself  of 
all  powers,  foreign  and  domestic  ;  and  that  too,  by  constructions 
which,  if  legitimate,  leave  no  limits  to  their  power.  Take  to- 
gether the  decisions  of  the  federal  court,  the  doctrines  of  the 
President,  and  the  misconstructions  of  the  constitutional  compact 
acted  on  by  the  legislature  of  the  federal  branch,  and  it  is  but  too 
evident,  that  the  three  ruling  branches  of  that  department  are  in 
combination  to  strip  their  colleagues,  the  State  authorities,  of  the 
powers  reserved  by  them,  and  to  exercise  themselves  all  func- 


CORRESPONDENCE.  427 

tions  foreign  and  domestic.  Under  the  power  to  regulate  com- 
merce, they  assume  indefinitely  that  also  over  agriculture  and 
manufactures,  and  call  it  regulation  to  take  the  earnings  of  one 
of  these  branches  of  industry,  and  that  too  the  most  depressed, 
and  put  them  into  the  pockets  of  the  other,  the  most  flourishing 
of  all.  Under  the  authority  to  establish  post  roads,  they  claim 
that  of  cutting  down  mountains  for  the  construction  of  roads,  of 
digging  canals,  and  aided  by  a  little  sophistry  on  the  words 
"  general  welfare,"  a  right  to  do,  not  only  the  acts  to  effect  that, 
which  are  specifically  enumerated  and  permitted,  but  whatsoever 
they  shall  think,  or  pretend  will  be  for  the  general  welfare. 
And  what  is  our  resource  for  the  preservation  of  the  constitution  ? 
Reason  and  argument  ?  You  might  as  well  reason  and  argue 
with  the  marble  columns  encircling  them.  The  representatives 
chosen  by  ourselves  ?  They  are  joined  in  the  combination, 
some  from  incorrect  views  of  government,  some  from  corrupt 
ones,  sufiicient  voting  together  to  out-number  the  sound  parts ; 
and  with  majorities  only  of  one,  two,  or  three,  bold  enough  to  go 
forward  in  defiance.  Are  we  then  to  stand  to  our  arms,  with 
the  hot-headed  Georgian  ?  No.  That  must  be  the  last  resource, 
not  to  be  thought  of  until  much  longer  and  greater  sufferings. 
If  every  infraction  of  a  compact  of  so  many  parties  is  to  be  re- 
sisted at  once,  as  a  dissolution  of  it,  none  can  ever  be  formed 
which  would  last  one  year.  We  must  have  patience  and  longer 
endurance  then  with  our  brethren  while  under  delusion ;  give 
them  time  for  reflection  and  experience  of  consequences  ;  keep 
ourselves  in  a  situation  to  profit  by  the  chapter  of  accidents ;  and 
separate  from  our  companions  only  when  the  sole  alternatives 
left,  are  the  dissolution  of  our  Union  with  them,  or  submission 
to  a  government  without  limitation  of  powers.  Between  these 
two  evils,  when  we  must  make  a  choice,  there  can  be  no  hesita- 
tion. But  in  the  meanwhile,  the  States  should  be  watchful  to 
note  every  material  usurpation  on  their  rights ;  to  denounce  them 
as  they  occur  in  the  most  peremptory  terms  ;  to  protest  against 
them  as  wrongs  to  which  our  present  submission  shall  be  con- 
sidered, not  as  acknowledgments  or  precedents  of  right,  but  as  a 


428  JEFFERSOK'S    WOBKS. 

temporary  yielding  to  the  lesser  evil,  until  their  accumulation 
shall  overweigh  that  of  separation.  I  would  go  still  further,  and 
give  to  the  federal  member,  by  a  regular  amendment  of  the  con- 
stitution, a  right  to  make  roads  and  canals  of  intercommunication 
between  the  ■  States,  providing  sufficiently  against  corrupt  prac- 
tices in  Congress,  (log-rolling,  &c.,)  by  declaring  that  the  federal 
proportion  of  each  State  of  the  moneys  so  employed,  shall  be  in 
works  within  the  State,  or  elsewhere  with  its  consent,  and  with 
a  due  salvo  of  jurisdiction.  This  is  the  course  which  I  think 
safest  and  best  as  yet. 

You  ask  my  opinion  of  the  propriety  of  giving  publicity  to  what 
is  stated  in  your  letter,  as  having  passed  between  Mr.  John  Q.. 
Adams  and  yourself.  Of  this  no  one  can  judge  but  yourself  It 
is  one  of  those  questions  which  belong  to  the  forum  of  feeling. 
This  alone  can  decide  on  the  degree  of  confidence  implied  in 
the  disclosure ;  whether  under  no  circumstances  it  was  to  be 
communicated  to  others?  It  does  not  seem  to  be  of  that  char- 
acter, or  at  all  to  wear  that  aspect.  They  are  historical  facts 
which  belong  to  the  present,  as  well  as  future  times.  I  doubt 
whether  a  single  fact,  known  to  the  world,  will  carry  as  clear 
conviction  to  it,  of  the  correctness  of  our  knowledge  of  the  trea- 
sonable views  of  the  federal  party  of  that  day,  as  that  disclosed 
by  this,  the  most  nefarious  and  daring  attempt  to  dissever  the 
Union,  of  which  the  Hartford  convention  was  a  subsequent  chap- 
ter ;  and  both  of  these  having  failed,  consolidation  becomes  the 
fourth  chapter  of  the  next  book  of  their  history.  But  this  opens 
with  a  vast  accession  of  strength  from  their  younger  recruits, 
who,  having  nothing  in  tnem  of  the  feelings  or  principles  of  '76, 
now  look  to  a  single  and  splendid  government  of  an  aristocracy, 
founded  on  banking  institutions,  and  moneyed  incorporations 
under  the  guise  and  cloak  of  their  favored  branches  of  manu- 
factures, commerce  and  navigation,  riding  and  ruling  over  the 
plundered  ploughman  and  beggared  yeomanry.  This  will  be  to 
them  a  next  best  blessing  to  the  monarchy  of  their  first  aim,  and 
perliaps  the  surest  stepping-stone  to  it. 

I  learu  with  great  satisfaction  that  your  school  is  thriving  well, 


OORRESPOITDENCE.  429 

and  hat  you  have  at  its  head  a  truly  classical  scholar.  He  is 
one  of  three  or  four  whom  I  can  hear  of  in  the  State.  We 
were  obliged  the  last  year  to  receive  shameful  Latinists  into  the 
classical  school  of  the  University,  such  as  we  will  certainly  refuse 
as  soon  as  we  can  get  from  better  schools  a  sufficiency  of  those 
properly  instructed  to  form  a  class.  We  must  get  rid  of  this 
Connecticut  Latin,  of  this  barbarous  confusion  of  long  and  short 
syllables,  which  renders  doubtful  whether  we  are  listening  to  a 
reader  of  Cherokee,  Shawnee,  Iroquoi's,  or  what.  Our  Univer- 
sity has  been  most  fortunate  in  the  five  professors  procured  from 
England.  A  finer  selection  could  not  have  been  made.  Besides 
their  being  of  a  grade  of  science  which  has  left  little  superior  be- 
hind, the  correctness  of  their  moral  character,  their  accommo- 
dating dispositions,  and  zeal  for  the  prosperity  of  the  institution, 
leave  us  nothing  more  to  wish.  I  verily  believe  that  as  high  a 
degree  of  education  can  now  be  obtained  here,  as  in  the  country 
they  left.  And  a  finer  set  of  youths  I  never  saw  assembled  for 
instruction.,  Thej''  committed  some  irregularities  at  first,  until 
they  learned  the  lawful  length  of  their  tether  ;  since  which  it  has 
never  been  transgressed  in  the  smallest  degree.  A  great  propor- 
tion of  them  are  severely  devoted  to  study,  and  I  fear  not  to  say 
that  within  twelve  or  fifteen  years  from  this  time,  a  majority  of 
the  rulers  of  our  State  will  have  been  educated  here.  They 
shall  carry  hence  the  correct  principles  of  our  day,  and  you  may 
count  assuredly  that  they  will  exhibit  their  country  in  a  degree 
of  sound  respectability  it  has  never  known,  either  in  our  days, 
or  those  of  our  forefathers.  I  cannot  live  to  see  it.  My  joy 
must  only  be  that  of  anticipation.  But  that  you  may  see  it  in 
full  fruition,  is  the  probable  consequence  of  the  twenty  years  I 
am  ahead  of  you  in  time,  and  is  the  sincere  prayer  of  your  affec- 
tionate and  constant  friend. 


430  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


TO    CLAIBOIINE    W.    GOOCH. 

MoNTicELLo,  January  9,  1826. 

Deak  Sir, — I  have  duly  received  your  favor  of  December  the 
31st,  and  fear,  with  you,  all  the  evils  which  the  present  lowering 
aspect  of  our  political  horizon  so  ominously  portends.  That  at 
some  future  day,  which  I  hoped  to  be  very  distant,  the  free  prin- 
ciples of  our  government  might  change  with  the  change  of 
circumstances  was  to  be  expected.  But  I  certainly  did  not  ex- 
pect that  they  would  not  over-live  the  generation  which  estab- 
lished them.  And  what  I  still  less  expected  was,  that  my  favor- 
ite western  country  was  to  be  made  the  instrument  of  change.  1 
had  ever  and  fondly  cherished  the  interests  of  that  country,  rely- 
ing on  it  as  a  barrier  against  the  degeneracy  of  public  opinion 
from  our  original  and  free  principles.  But  the  bait  of  local  in- 
terests, artfully  prepared  for  their  palate,  has  decoyed  them  from 
their  kindred  attachments,  to  alliances  alien  to  them.  Yet  al- 
though I  have  little  hope  that  the  torrent  of  consolidation  can  be 
withstood,  I  should  not  be  for  giving  up  the  ship  without  efforts 
to  save  her.  She  lived  well  through  the  first  squall,  and  may 
weather  the  present  one.  But,  dear  Sir,  I  am  not  the  champior; 
called  for  by  our  present  dangers.  "  Non  tali  auxilio,  nee  defen- 
soribus  istis,  tempus  eget."  A  waning  body,  a  waning  mind,  and 
waning  memory,  with  habitual  ill  health,  warn  me  to  withdraw 
and  relinquish  the  arena  to  younger  and  abler  athletes.  I  am 
sensible  myself,  if  others  are  not,  that  this  is  my  duty.  If  my 
distant  friends  know  it  not,  those  around  me  can  inform  them 
that  they  should  not.  in  friendship,  wish  to  call  me  into  conflicts, 
exposing  only  the  decays  which  nature  has  inscribed  among  her 
unalterable  laws,  and  injuring  the  common  cause  by  a  senile  and 
Duny  defence. 

I  will,  however,  say  one  word  on  the  subject.  The  South 
Carolina  resolutions.  Van  Buren's  motion,  and  above  all  Bayley's 
propositions,  show  that  other  States  are  coming  forward  on  the 
subject,  and  better  for  any  one  to  take  the  lead  than  Virginia, 
where  opposition  is  considered  as  common-place,  and  a  mere 


CORRESPONDENCE.  431 

matter  of  form  and  habit.  We  shall  see  what  our  co-States  pro- 
pose, and  before  the  close  of  the  session  "we  may  shape  our  own 
course  more  understandingly. 

Accept  the  assurance  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO  * 

MoNTfCELi.o,  .January  '21.  1826. 

Deae  Sir, — Your  favor  of  January  15th  is  received,  and  I  am 
entirely  sensible  of  the  kindness  of  the  motives  which  suggested 
the  caution  it  recommended.  But  I  believe  what  I  have  done 
is  the  onlv  thing  I  could  have  done  with  honor  or  conscience. 
Mr.  Giles  requested  me  to  state  a  fact  which  he  knew  himself, 
and  of  which  he  knew  me  to  be  possessed.  What  use  he  intend- 
ed to  make  of  it  I  knew  not,  nor  had  I  a  right  to  inquire,  or  to 
indicate  any  suspicion  that  he  would  rnake  an  unfair  one.  That 
was  his  concern,  not  mine,  and  his  character  was  sufficient  to 
sustain  the  responsibility  for  it.  I  knew,  too,  that  if  an  nncandid 
use  should  be  made  of  it,  there  would  be  found  those  who  would 
so  prove  it.  Independent  of  the  terms  of  intimate  friendship  in 
which  Mr.  Giles  and  myself  have  ever  lived  together,  the  world's 
respect  entitled  him  to  the  justice  of  my  testimony  to  any  truth 
he  might  call  for ;  and  how  that  testimony  should  connect  me  with 
whatever  he-may  do  or  write  hereafter,  and  with  his  whole  career, 
as  you  apprehend,  is  not  understood  hf  me.  With  his  personal 
controversies  I  have  nothing  to  do.  I  .never  took  any  part  in 
them,  or  in  those  of  any  other  person.  Add  to  this,  that  the  state- 
ment I  have  given  him  on  the  subject  of  Mr.  Adams,  is  entirely 
honorable  to  him  in  every  sentiment  and  fact  it  contains.  There 
is  not  a  word  in  it  which  I  would  wish  to  recall.  It  is  one  which 
Mr.  Adams  himself  might  willingly  quote,  did  he  need  to  quote 
anything.  It  was  simply  that  during  the  continuance  of  the  em- 
bargo, Mr.  Adams  informed  me  of  a  combination  (without  nam- 
ing any  one  concerned  in  it,)  which  had  for  its  object  a  sever- 

*  Address  lost. 


432  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

ance  of  the  Union,  for  a  tirpe  at  least.  That  Mr.  Adams  and 
myself  not  being  then  in  the  habit  of  mutual  consultation  and 
confidence,  I  considered  it  as  the  stronger  proof  of  the  purity  of 
his  patriotism,  which  was  able  to  lift  him  above  all  party  pas- 
sions when  the  safety  of  his  country  was  endangered.  Nor  have 
I  kept  this  honorable  fact  to  myself.  During  the  late  canvas, 
particularly,  I  had  more  than  one  occasion  to  quote  it  to  persons 
who  were  expressing  opinions  respecting  him,  of  which  this  was 
a  direct  corrective.  I  have  never  entertained  for  Mr.  Adams  any 
but  sentiments  of  esteem  and  respect ;  and  if  we  have  not  thouglit 
alike  on  political  subjects,  I  yet  never  doubted  the  honesty  of 
his  opinions,  of  which  the  letter  in  question,  if  published,  will 
be  an  additional  proof.  Still,  I  recognize  your  friendship  in  sug- 
gesting a  review  of  it,  and  am  glad  of  this,  as  of  every  other  oc- 
casion of  repeating  to  you  the  assurance  of  my  constant  attach- 
ment and  respect. 


TO    JAMES    MADISON. 

MoNTicitLr.o,  February  17,  18'26. 

Dear  Sir, —       ******** 

Immediately  on  seeing  the  overwhelming  vote  of  the  House 
of  Representatives  against  giving  us  another  dollar,  I  rode  to  the 
University  and  desired  Mr.  Brockenbrough  to  engage  in  nothing 
new,  to  stop  everything  6n  hand  which  could  be  done  without, 
and  to  employ  all  hig  force  and  funds  in  finishing  the  circular 
room  for  the  books,  and  the  anatomical  theatre.  These  can- 
not be  done  without ;  and  for  these  and  all  our  debts  we  have 
funds  enough.  But  I  think  it  prudent  then  to  clear  the  decks 
thoroughly,  to  see  how  we  shall  stand,  and  what  we  may  ac- 
complish further.  In  the  meantime,  there  have  arrived  for  us  in 
different  ports  of  the  United  States,  ten  boxes  of  books  from 
Paris,  seven  from  London,  and  from  Germany  I  know  not  how 
many  ;  in  all,  perhaps,  about  twenty-five  boxes.  Not  one  of 
these  can  be  opened  until  the  book-room  is  completely  finished, 


OOREESPONDENOE.  433 

and  all  the  shelves  ready  to  receive  their  charge  directly  from 
the  boxes  as  they  shall  be  opened.     This  cannot  be  till  May.     I 
hear  nothing  definitive  of  the  three  thousand  dollars  duty  of 
which  we  are  asking  the  remission  from  Congress.     In  the  se- 
lection of  our  Law  Professor,  we  must  be  rigorously  attentive  to 
his  political  principles.     You  will  recollect  that  before  the  revo- 
lution, Coke  Littleton  was  the  universal  elementary  book  of  law 
students,  and  a  sounder  whig  never  wrote,  nor  of  profounder 
learning  in  the  orthodox  doctrines  of  the  British  constitution,  or 
in  what  were  called  English  liberties.     You  remember  also  that 
our  lawyers  were  then  all  whigs.     But  when  his  black-letter  text, 
and  uncouth  but  cunning  learning  got  out  of  fashion,  and  the 
honied  Mansfieldism  of  Blackstone  became  the  students'  horn- 
book, from  that  moment,  that  profession  (the  nursery  of  our  Con- 
gress) began  to  slide  into  toryism,  and  nearly  all  the  young  brood 
of  lawyers  now  are  of  that  hue.     They  suppose  themselves,  in- 
deed, to  be  whigs,  because  they  no  longer  know  what  whigism 
or  republicanism  means.     It  is  in  our  seminary  that  that  vestal 
flame  is  to  be  kept  alive  ;  it  is  thence  it  is  to  spread  anew  over 
our  own  and  the  sister  States.     If  we  are  true  and  vigilant  in  our 
trust,  within  a  dozen  or  twenty  years  a  majority  of  our  own  legis- 
lature wili  be  from  one  school,  and  many  disciples  will  have  car- 
ried its  doctrines  home  with  them  to  their  several  States,  and  will 
have  leavened  thus  the  whole  mass.     New  York  has  taken  strong 
ground  in  vindication  of  the  constitution  ;  South  Carolina  had 
already  done  the  same.     Although  I  was  against  our  leading,  I 
am  equally  against  omitting  to  follow  in  the  same   line,  and 
backing   them  firmly  ;   and  I  hope  that  yourself  or  some  other 
will  mark  out  the  track  to  be  pursued  by  us. 

You  will  have  seen  in  the  newspapers  some  proceedings  in  the 
legislature,  which  have  cost  me  much  mortification.  My  own 
debts  had  become  considerable,  but  not  beyond  the  effect  of 
some  lopping  of  property,  which  would  have  been  little  felt, 
when  our  friend  ****  gave  me  the  coup  de  grace.  Ever  since 
that  I  have  been  paying  twelve  hundred  dollars  a  year  interest 
on  his  debt,  which,  with  my  own,  was  absorbing  so  much  of 
vtiL.  VII.  28 


434  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

my  annual  income,  as  that  the  maintenance  of  my  family  was 
making  deep  and  rapid  inroads  on  my  capital,  and  had  already 
done  it.  Still,  sales  at  a  fair  price  would  leave  me  competently 
provided.  Had  crops  and  prices  for  several  years  been  such  as 
to  maintain  a  steady  competition  of  substantial  bidders  at  market, 
all  would  have  been  safe.  But  the  long  succession  of  years  of 
stunted  crops,  of  reduced  prices,  the  general  prostration  of  the 
farming  business,  under  levies  for  the  support  of  manufacturers, 
&c.,  with  the  calamitous  fluctuations  of  value  in  our  paper  me- 
dium, have  kept  agriculture  in  a  state  of  abject  depression,  which 
has  peopled  the  western  States  by  silently  breaking  up  those  on 
the  Atlantic,  and  glutted  the  land  market,  while  it  drew  off  its 
bidders.  In  such  a  state  of  things,  property  has  lost  its  charac- 
ter of  being  a  resource  for  debts.  Highland  in  Bedford,  which, 
in  the  days  of  our  plethory,  sold  readily  for  from  iifty  to  one 
hundred  dollars  the  acre,  (and  such  sales  were  many  then,]  would 
not  now  sell  for  more  than  from  ten  to  twenty  dollars,  or  one- 
quarter  or  one-fifth  of  its  former  price.  Reflecting  on  these 
things,  the  practice  occurred  to  me,  of  selling,  on  fair  valuation, 
and  by  way  of  lottery,  often  resorted  to  before  the  Revolution  to 
efl"ect  large  sales,  and  still  in  constant  usage  in  every  State  for  in- 
dividual as  well  as  corporation  purposes.  If  it  is  permitted  in 
my  case,  my  lands  here  alone,  with  the  mills,  &c.,  will  pay  every 
thing,  and  leave  me  Monticello  and  a  farm  free.  If  refused,  I 
must  sell'  everything  here,  perhaps  considerably  in  Bedford,  move 
thither  with  my  family,  where  I  have  not  even  a  log  hut  to  put 
my  head  into,  and  whether  ground  for  burial,  will  depend  on  the 
depredations  which,  under  the  form  of  sales,  shall  have  been  com- 
mitted on  my  property.  The  question  then  with  me  was  ultrum 
horum?  But  why  afflict  you  with  these  details?  Indeed,  I  can- 
not tell,  unless  pains  are  lessened  by  communication  with  a 
friend.  The  friendship  which  has  subsisted  between  us,  now 
half  a  century,  and  the  harmony  of  our  political  principles  and 
pursuits,  have  been  sources  of  constant  happiness  to  me  through 
that  long  period.  And  if  I  remove  beyond  the  reach  of  attentions 
to  the  University,  or  beyond  the  bourne  of  life  itself,  as  I  soon 


OOERESPONDENOE.  435 

must  It  is  a  comfort  to  leave  that  institution  under  your  care, 
and  an  assurance  that  it  will  not  be  wanting.  It  has  also  been  a 
great  solace  to  me,  to  believe  that  you  are  engaged  in  vindicating 
to  posterity  the  course  we  have  pursued  for  preserving  to  them, 
in  all  their  purity,  the  blessings  of  self-government,  which  we 
had  assisted  too  in  acquiring  for  them.  If  ever  the  earth  has 
beheld  a  system  of  administration  conducted  with  a  single  and 
steadfast  eye  to  the  general  interest  and  happiness  of  those  com- 
mitted to  it,  one  which,  protected  by  truth,  can  never  know  re- 
proach, it  is  that  to  which  our  lives  have  been  devoted.  To 
myself  you  have  been  a  pillar  of  support  through  life.  Take 
care  of  me  when  dead,  and  be  assured  that  I  shall  leave  with 
you  my  last  afifections. 


TO    JOHN    ADAMS. 

MoNTiCEi.LO,  March  25,  1826. 

Dear  Sir, — My  grandson,  Thomas  J.  Randolph,  the  bearer 
of  this  letter,  being  on  a  visit  to  Boston,  would  think  he  had  seen 
nothing  were  he  to  leave  without  seeing  you.  Although  I  truly 
sympathize  with  you  in  the  trouble  these  interruptions  give,  yet 
I  must  ask  for  him  permission  to  pay  to  you  his  personal  re- 
spects. Like  other  young  people,  he  wishes  to  be  able  in  the 
winter  nights  of  old  age,  to  recount  to  those  around  him,  what  he 
has  heard  and  learnt  of  the  heroic  age  preceding  his  birth,  and 
which  of  the  Argonauts  individually  he  was  in  time  to  have 
seen. 

It  was  the  lot  of  our  early  years  to  witness  nothing  but  the 
dull  monotony  of  a  colonial  subservience ;  and  of  our  riper  years, 
to  breast  the  labors  and  perils  of  working  out  of  it.  Theirs  are 
the  Halcyon  calms  succeeding  the  storm  which  our  Argosy  had 
so  stoutly  weathered.  Gratify  his  ambition  then,  by  recei^ring 
his  best  bow ;  and  my  solicitude  for  your  health,  by  enabling 
him  to  bring  me  a  favorable  account  of  it.  Mine  is  but  indiffer- 
ent, but  not  so  my  friendship  and  respect  for  you. 


4:36  JEFFERSON'S    "WORKS. 


TO    JOHN    «iUINCT    ADAMS. 

M0NTICEI.L0,  March  30,  1826 

Deab  Sir, — I  am  thankful  for  the  very  interesting  message 
and  documents  of  which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me  a 
copy,  and  will  state  my  recollections  as  to  the  particular  passage 
of  the  message  to  which  you  ask  my  attention.  On  the  conclu- 
sion of  peace,  Congress,  sensible  of  their  right  to  assume  inde- 
pendence, would  not  condescend  to  ask  its  acknowledgment 
from  other  nations,  yet  were  willing,  by  some  of  the  ordinary  in- 
ternational transactions,  to  receive  what  would  imply  that  ac- 
knowledgment. They  appointed  commissioners,  therefore,  to  pro- 
pose treaties  of  commerce  to  the  principal  nations  of  Europe.  I 
was  then  a  member  of  Congress,  was  of  the  committee  appointed 
to  prepare  instructions  for  the  commissioners,  was,  as  you  sup- 
pose, the  draughtsman  of  those  actually  agreed  to,  and  was  joined 
with  your  father  and  Dr.  Franklin,  to  carry  them  into  execution. 
But  the  stipulations  making  part  of  these  instructions,  which  re- 
spected privateering,  blockades,  contraband,  and  freedom  of  the 
fisheries,  were  not  original  conceptions  of  mine.  They  had  be- 
fore been  suggested  by  Dr.  Franklin,  in  some  of  his  papers  in 
possession  of  the  public,  and  had,  I  think,  been  recommended  in 
some  letter  of  his  to  Congress.  I  happen  only  to  have  been  the 
inserter  of  them  in  the  first  public  act  which  gave  the  formal 
sanction  of  a  public  authority.  We  accordingly  proposed  our 
treaties,  containing  these  stipulations,  to  the  principal  govern- 
ments of  Europe.  But  we  were  then  just  emerged  from  a  sub- 
ordinate condition ;  the  nations  had  as  yet  known  nothing  of  us, 
and  had  not  yet  reflected  on  the  relations  which  it  might  be  their 
interest  to  establish  with  us.  Most  of  them,  therefgre,  listened 
to  our  propositions  with  coyness  and  reserve  ;  old  Frederic  alone 
closing  with  us  without  hesitation.  The  negotiator  of  Portugal, 
indeed,  signed  a  treaty  with  us,  which  his  government  did  not 
ratify,  and  Tuscany  was  near  a  final  agreement.  Becoming 
sensible,  however,  ourselves,  that  we  should  do  nothing  with  the 
greater  powers,  we  thought  it  better  not  to  hamper  our  country 


OORRESPONDENCE.  437 

with  engagements  to  those  of  less  significance,  and  suffered  our 
powers  to  expire  without  closing  any  other  negotiations.  Aus- 
tria soon  after  became  desirous  of  a  treaty  with  us,  and  her  am- 
bassador pressed  it  often  on  me  ;  but  our  commerce  with  her  be- 
ing no  object,  I  evaded  her  repeated  invitations.  Had  these  gov- 
ernments been  then  apprized  of  the  station  we  should  so  soon  oc- 
cupy among  nations,  all,  I  believe,  would  have  met  us  promptly 
and  with  frankness.  These  principles  would  then  have  been  es- 
tabhshed  with  all,  and  from  being  the  conventional  law  with  us 
alone,  would  have  slid  into  their  engagements  with  one  another, 
and  become  general.  These  are  the  facts  within  my  recollec- 
tion. They  have  not  yet  got  into  written  history;  but  theii 
adoption  by  our  southern  brethren  will  bring  them  into  observ- 
ance, and  make  them,  what  they  should  be,  a  part  of  the  law  of 
the  world,  and  of  the  reformation  of  principles  for  which  they 
will  be  indebted  to  us.  I  pray  you  to  accept  the  homage  of  my 
friendly  and  high  consideration. 


TO  THE  HONORABLE  EDWARD  EVERETT. 

MoNTiOELLo,  April  8,  1826 

Dear  Sir, — I  thank  you  for  the  very  able  and  eloquent  speech 
you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me  on  the  amendment  of  the 
constitution,  proposed  by  Mr.  McDuffie.  I  have  read  it  with 
pleasure  and  satisfaction,  and  concur  with  much  of  its  contents. 
On  the  question  of  the  lawfulness  of  slavery,  that  is  of  the  right 
of  one  man  to  appropriate  to  himself  the  faculties  of  another 
without  his  consent,  I  certainly  retain  my  early  opinions.  On 
that,  however,  of  third  persons  to  interfere  between  the  parties, 
and  the  effect  of  conventional  modifications  of  that  pretension, 
we  are  probably  nearer  together.  I  think  with  you,  also,  thai 
the  constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a  compact  of  independent 
nations  subject  to  the  rules  acknowledged  in  similar  cases,  as 
well  that  of  amendment  provided  within  itself,  as,  in  case  of 
abuse,  the  justly  dreaded  but  unavoidable  ultimo  ratio  gentium. 


438  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

The  report  on  the  Panama  question  mentioned  in  your  letter  has 
as  I  suppose,  got  separated  by  the  way.  It  will  probably  come 
by  another  mail.  In  some  of  the  letters  you  have  been  kind 
enough  to  write  me,  I  have  been  made  to  hope  the  favor  of  a 
visit  from  Washington.  It  would  be  received  with  sincere  wel- 
come, and  unwillingly  relinquished  if  no  circumstance  should 
render  it  inconvenient  to  yourself.  I  repeat  always  with  pleas- 
ure the  assurances  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    DK.   EMMETT,   PROFESSOR    OF    NATURAL    HISTORY   AT    THE    UNIVER- 
SITY   or    VIRGINIA. 

MoNTCJKLLo,  April  27,  1826. 

Dear  Sir, — It  is  time  to  think  of  the  introduction  of  the  school 
of  Botany  into  our  institution.  Not  that  I  suppose  the  lectures 
can  be  begun  in  the  present  year,  but  that  we  may  this  year 
make  the  preparations  necessary  for  commencing  them  the  next. 
For  that  branch,  I  presume,  can  be  taught  advfintageously  only 
during  the  short  season  while  nature  is  in  general  bloom,  say 
during  a  certain  portion  of  the  months  of  April  and  May,  when, 
suspending  the  other  branches  of  your  department,  that  of  Bota- 
ny may  claim  your  exclusive  attention.  Of  this,  however,  you 
are  to  be  the  judge,  as  well  as  of  what  I  may  now  propose  on 
the  subject  of  preparation.  I  will  do  this  in  writing,  while  sit- 
ting at  my  table,  and  at  ease,  because  I  can  rally  there,  for  your 
consideration,  with  more  composure  than  in  extempore  con- 
versation, my  thoughts  on  what  we  have  to  do  in  the  present 
season. 

I  suppose  you  were  well  acquainted,  by  character,  if  not  per- 
sonally, with  the  late  Abbe  Correa,  who  past  some  time  among 
us,  first  as  a  distinguished  savant  of  Em'ope,  and  afterwards  as 
ambassador  of  Portugal,  resident  with  our  government.  Pro- 
foundly learned  in  several  other  branches  of  science,  he  was  so, 
above  all  others,  in  that  of  Botany ;  in  which  he  preferred  an 
amalgamation  of  the  methods  of  Linnaeus  and  of  Jussieu,  to  eithei 


COBRESPONDEN'OE.  439 

of  them  exclusively.  Our  institution  being  then  on  hand,  in 
which  that  was  of  course  to  be  one  of  the  subjects  of  instruction, 
I  availed  myself  of  his  presence  and  friendship  to  obtain  from 
him  a  general  idea  of  the  extent  of  ground  we  should  employ, 
and  the  number  and  character  of  the  plants  we  should  introduce 
into  it.  He  accordingly  sketched  for  me  a  mere  outline  of  the 
scale  he  would  recommend,  restrained  altogether  to  objects  of 
use,  and  indulging  not  at  all  in  things  of  mere  curiosity,  and  es- 
pecially not  yet  thinking  of  a  hot-house,  or  even  of  a  green- 
house. I  enclose  you  a  copy  of  his  paper,  which  was  the  more 
satisfactory  to  me,  as  it  coincided  with  the  moderate  views  to 
which  our  endowments  as  yet  confine  us.  I  am  still  the  more 
satisfied,  as  it  seemed  to  be  confirmed  by  your  own  way  of 
thinking,  as  I  understood  it  in  our  conversation  of  the  other  day. 
To  your  judgment  altogether  his  ideas  will  be  submitted,  as  well 
as  my  own,  now  to  be  suggested  as  to  the  operations  of  the  pres- 
ent year,  preparatory  to  the  commencement  of  the  school  in  the 
next. 

1.  Our  first  operation  must  be  the  selection  of  a  piece  of  ground 
of  proper  soil  and  site,  suppose  of  about  six  acres,  as  M.  Correa 
proposes.  In  choosing  this  we  are  to  regard  the  circumstances 
of  soil,  water,  and  distance.  I  have  diligently  examined  all  our 
grounds  with  this  view,  and  think  that  that  on  the  public  road, 
at  the  upper  corner  of  our  possessions,  where  the  stream  issues 
from  them,  has  more  of  the  requisite  qualities  than  any  other 
spot  we  possess.*  170  yards  square,  taken  at  that  angle,  would 
make  the  six  acres  we  want.  But  the  angle  at  the  road  is  acute, 
and  the  form  of  the  ground  will  be  trapezoid,  uot  square.  I 
would  take,  therefore,  for  its  breadth,  all  the  ground  between  the 
road  and  the  dam  of  the  brick  pnnds,  extending  eastwardly  up 
the  hill,  as  far  and  as  wide  as  our  quantity  would  require.  The 
bottom  ground  would  suit  for  the  garden  plants ;  the  hill  sides 
for  the  trees. 

*  To  wit,   i9,3aO  square  yards=4  acres  for  the  garden  of  plants. 
9,680       "  "      =2  acres  for  the  plants  of  trees. 

29,0iU  si^uare  yards=6  acres  in  the  whole. 


440  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

2.  Operation.  Enclose  the  ground  with  a  serpentine  brick 
wall  seven  feet  high.  This  would  take  about  80,000  bricks, 
and  cost  $800,  and  it  must  depend  on  our  finances  whether  they 
will  afford  that  immediately,  or  allow  us,  for  awhile,  but  enclos- 
ure of  posts  and  rails. 

3.  Operation.  Form  all  the  hill  sides  into  level  terrasses  of 
convenient  breadth,  curving  with  the  hill,  and  the  level  ground 
into  beds  and  alleys. 

4.  Operation.  Make  out  a  list  of  the  plants  thought  necessa- 
ry and  sufficient  for  botanical  purposes,  and  of  the  trees  we  pro- 
pose to  introduce,  and  take  measures  in  time  for  procuring  them. 

As  to  the  seeds  of  plants,  much  may  be  obtained  from  the  gar- 
deners of  our  own  country.  I  have,  moreover,  a  special  resource. 
For  three-and-twenty  years  of  the  last  twenty-five,  my  good  old 
friend  Thonin,  superintendent  of  the  garden  of  plants  at  Paris, 
has  regularly  sent  me  a  box  of  seeds,  of  such  exotics,  as-  to  us, 
as  would  suit  our  climate,  and  containing  nothing  indigenous  to 
our  country.  These  I  regularly  sent  to  the  public  and  private 
gardens  of  the  other  States,  having  as  yet  no  employment  for 
them  here.  But  during  the  last  two  years  this  envoi  has  been 
intermitted,  I  know  not  why.  I  will  immediately  write  and  re- 
quest a  re-commencement  of  that  kind  office,  on  the  ground 
that  we  can  now  employ  them  ourselves.  They  can  be  here  in 
early  spring. 

The  trees  I  should  propose  would  be  exotics  of  distinguished 
usefulness,  and  accommodated  to  our  climate  ;  such  as  the  Larch, 
Cedar  of  Libanus,  Cork,  Oak,  the  Maronnier,  Mahogany  ?  the 
Catachu  or  Indian  rubber  tree  of  Napul,  (30°)  Teak  tree,  or  In- 
dian oak  of  Bumian,  (23°)  the  various  woods  of  Brazil,  &c. 

The  seed  of  the  Larch  can  be  obtained  from  a  tree  at  Mou- 
ticello.  Coues  of  toe  Cedar  of  Libanus  are  in  most  of  our  seed 
shops,  but  may  be  had  fresh  from  the  trees  in  the  English  gar- 
dens. The  Maronnier  and  Cork-oak,  I  can  obtain  from  France 
There  is  a  Maronnier  at  Mount  Vernon,  but  it  is  a  seedling,  and 
not  therefore  select.  The  others  may  be  .got  through  the  means 
of  our  ministers  and  consuls  in  the  countries  where  they  grow, 


CORRESPONDENCE.  4il 

or  from  the  seed  shops  of  England,  where  they  may  very  pos- 
sibly be  found.  Lastly,  a  gardener  of  sufficient  skill  must  be  oV>- 
tained. 

This,  dear  Sir,  is  the  sum  of  what  occurs  to  me  at  present ; 
think  of  it,  and  let  us  at  once  enter  on  the  operations. 

Accept  my  friendly  and  respectful  salutations. 


TO    DOCTOR    JOHN    P.    EMMET. 

MoNTiuKLi.o,  M;iy  2,  1826. 

Dear  Sir, — The  difficulties  suggested  in  your  favor  of  the 
28th  ult.,  are  those  which  must  occur  at  the  commencement  of 
every  undertaking.  A  full  view  of  the  subject  however  will,  I 
think,  solve  them.  In  every  meditated  enterprise,  the  means  we 
can  employ  are  to  be  estimated,  and  to  these  must  be  proportioned 
our  expectations  of  effect.  If,  for  example,  to  the  cultivation  of 
a  given  field  we  can  devote  but  one  hundred  dollars,  we  are  not 
to  expect  the  product  which  $1,000  would  extract  from  it.  Ap- 
plying this  principle  to  the  present  subject  of  education,  from  a 
revenue  of  $15,000,  and  with  eight  Professors,  we  cannot  expect 
to  obtain  that  grade  of  instruction  to  our  youth,  which  15,000 
guineas  and  thirty  or  forty  instructors  would  give.  Reviewing, 
then,  the  branches  of 'science  in  which  we  wish  our  youth  to  ob- 
tain some  instruction,  we  must  distribute  them  into  so  many 
groups  as  we  can  employ  Professors,  and  as  equally  too  as  prac- 
ticable. We  must  take  into  account  also  the  time  which  our 
youths  can  generally  afford  to  the  whole  circle  of  education,  and 
proportion  the  extent  of  instruction  in  each  branch  to  the  quota 
of  that  time,  and  of  the  Professor's  attention  which  may  fall  to 
Its  share.  In  the  smallest  of  our  academies,  two  Professors  alone 
can  be  afforded, — one  of  languages,  another  of  sciences,  or  of 
Philosophy,  as  he  is  generally  styled.  The  degree  of  instruction 
which  can  be  given  in  each  branch,  at  these  schools,  must  be 
very  moderate.  Yet  there  are  youths  whose  means  can  afford 
no  more,  and  who  nevertheless  are  glad  even  of  that.     The  most 


442  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

highly  endowed  of  onr  Seminaries  has  a  revenue  of  perhaps  $25,- 
000  or  $30,000.  They  consequently  may  subdivide  the  sciences 
into  twelve  or  fifteen  schools,  and  give  a  proportionably  more 
minute  degree  of  instruction  in  each.  It  has  enabled  them,  for 
example,  to  have  five  or  six  Professors  of  Theology.  In  Europe, 
some  of  their  literary  institutions  can  afford  to  employ  twenty, 
thirty,  or  forty  Professors.  Our  legislature,  contemplating  their 
means,  took  their  stand  at  a  revenue  of  $15,000,  meant  for  an 
establishment  of  ten  Professors,  but  equal  in  fact  to  eight  only. 
Accommodating  ourselves,  therefore,  to  their  views,  we  had  to 
distribute  into  eight  groups  those  sciences  in  which  we  wished 
Dur  youth  should  receive  instrQction,  and  to  content  ourselves 
with  the  portion  which  that  number  could  give.  On  the  Pro- 
fessors it  would  of  course  devolve  to  form  their  lectures  on  such 
a  scale  of  extension  only,  as  to  give  to  each  of  the  sciences  al- 
lotted them  its  due  share  of  their  time. 

But  another  material  question  is,  what  is  the  whole  term  of 
time  which  the  students  can  give  to  the  whole  course  of  instruc- 
tion ?  I  should  say  that  three  years  should  be  allowed  to  gen- 
eral education,  and  two,  or  rather  three,  to  the  particular  pro- 
fession for  which  they  are  destined.  We  receive  our  students 
at  the  age  of  sixteen,  expected  to  he  previously  so  far  qualified 
in  the  languages,  ancient  and  modern,  as  that  one  year  in  our 
schools  shall  suffice  for  their  last  polish.  A  student  then  with 
us  may  give  his  first  year  here  to  languages  and  Mathematics  : 
his  second  to  Mathematics  and  Physics  ;  his  third  to  Physics  and 
Chemistry,  with  the  other  objects  of  that  school  I  particularize 
this  distribution  merely  for  illustration,  and  not  as  that  whic'i 
either  is,  or  perhaps  ought  to  be  established.  This  would  ascribe 
one  year  to  Languages,  two  to  Mathematics,  two  to  Physics,  and 
one  to  Chemistry  and  its  associates.  Let  us  see  next  how  the 
items  of  your  school  may  be  accommodated  to  this  scale ;  but 
by  way  of  illustration  only,  as  before.  The  allotments  to  your 
scnool  are  Botany,  Zoology,  Mineralogy,  Chemistry,  Geology 
and  Rural  Economy.  This  last,  however,  need  not  be  consideret 
is  a  distinct  branch,  but  as  one  which  may  be  sufficiently  treated 


CORRESPONDENCE.  443 

by  seasonable  alliances  with  the  kindred  subjects  of  Chemistry, 
Botany  and  Zoology.  Suppose  then  you  give  twelve  dozen 
lectures  a  year ;  say  two  dozen  to  Botany  and  Zoology,  two 
dozen  to  Mineralogy  and  Geology,  and  eight  dozen  to  Chemistry. 
Or  I  should  think  that  Mineralogy,  Geology  and  Chemistry  might 
be  advantageously  blended  in  the  same  course  Then  your  year 
would  be  formed  into  two  grand  divisions ;  one-third  to  Botany 
and  Zoology,  and  two-thirds  to  Chemistry  and  its  associates, 
Mineralogy  and  Geology.  To  the  last,  indeed,  I  would  give  the 
least  possible  time.  To  learn,  as  far  as  observation  has  informed 
us,  the  ordinary  arrangement  of  the  different  strata  of  minerals  in 
the  earth,  to  know  from  their  habitual  collocations  and  prox- 
imities, where  we  find  one  mineral,  whether  another,  for  which 
we  are  seeking,  may  be  expected  to  be  in  its  neighborhood,  is 
useful.  But  the  dreams  about  the  modes  of  creation,  inquiries 
whether  our  giobe  has  been  formed  by  the  agency  of  fire  or 
water,  how  many  millions  of  years  it  has  cost  Vulcan  or  Neptune 
to  produce  what  the  fiat  of  the  Creator  would  effect  by  a  single 
act  of  will,  is  too  idle  to  be  worth  a  single  hour  of  any  man's 
life.  You  will  say  that  two-thirds  of  a  year,  or  any  better  esti- 
mated partition  of  it,  can  give  but  an  inadequate  knowledge  of 
the  whole  science  of  Chemistry.  But  consider  that  we  do  not 
expect  our  schools  to  turn  out  their  alumni  already  enthroned  on 
th«  pinnacles  of  their  respective  sciences  ;  but  only  so  far  ad- 
vanced in  each  as  to  be  able  to  pursue  them  by  themselves,  and 
to  become  Newtons  and.  La  Places  by  energies  and  perseverances 
to  be  continued  through  life.  I  have  said  that  our  original  plan 
comprehended  ten  Professors,  and  we  hope  to  be  able  ere  long 
to  supply  the  other  two.  One  should  relieve  the  Medical  Pro- 
fessor from  Anatomy  and  Surgery,  and  a  school  for  the  othei 
would  be  made  up  of  the  surcharges  of  yours,  and  that  of 
Physics. 

From  these  views  of  the  subject,  dear  Sir,  your  only  difficulty 
appears  to  be  so  to  proportion  the  time  you  can  give  to  the  differ- 
ent branches  committed  to  you,  as  to  bring,  within  the  compais 
of  a  year,  lor  example,  that  degree  of  instruction  in  each  which 


4M  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

the  year  will  afford.  This  may  require  some  experience,  and 
continued  efforts  at  condensation.  But,  once  effected,  it  wil] 
place  your  mind  at  ease,  and  give  to  our  country  a  result  propor- 
tioned to  the  means  it  furnishes,  and  which  ought  to  satisfy,  and 
will  satisfy,  all  reasonable  men.  I  am  certain  it  will  those  to 
whom  the  charge  and  direction  of  this  institution  have  been  par- 
ticularly confided,  and  to  none  assuredly  more  than  to  him  from 
whom  your  doubts  have  drawn  this  unauthoritative  exposition 
of  the  public  expectations.  And,  with  this  assurance,  be  pleased 
to  accept  that  of  my  sincerely  friendly  esteem  and  respect. 

Deak  Sir, — After  sealing  the  enclosed  letter,  it  occurred  to 
me  that  being  on  a  general  subject,  and  one  equally  applicable 
to  the  cases  of  your  colleagues,  the  other  Professors,  I  should 
wish  it  to  be  read  by  them  also.  It  may  produce  an  union  of 
views,  and  harmony  of  action,  which  may  be  useful  to  the  In- 
stitution.    Yours  affectionately. 


TO  . 

MoNTicELLo,  May  15,  1826. 

Dear  Sir, — The  sentiments  of  justice  which  have  dictated 
your  letters  of  the  3d  and  9th  inst.,  are  worthy  of  all  praise,  and 
merit  and  meet  my  thankful  acknowledgments.  Were  your 
father  now  living  and  proposing,  as  you  are,  to  publish  a  second 
edition  of  his  memoirs,  I  am  satisfied  he  would  give  a  very  dif- 
ferent aspect  to  the  pages  of  that  work  which  respect  Arnold's 
invasion  and  surprise  of  Richmond,  in  the  winter  of  1780-81. 
He  was  then,  1  believe,  in  South  Carolina,  too  distant  from  the 
scene  of  tliotie  transactions  to  relate  them  on  his  own  knowledge, 
or  even  to  sii't  them  from  the  chaff  of  the  rumors  then  afloat, 
rumors  which  vanished  soon  before  the  real  truth,  as  vapors  be- 
fore the  sun,  obliterated  by  their  notoriety,  from  every  candid 
mind,  and  by  the  voice  of  the  many  who,  as  actors  or  spectators 
knew  what  had  truly  past.     The  facts  shall  speak  for  themselves 


OOERESPONDENCE,  445 

General  Washington  had  just  given  notice  to  all  the  Governors 
on  the  sea-board,  north  and  south,  that  an  embarcation  was  tak- 
ing place  at  New  York,  destined  for  the  southward,  as  was 
given  out  there ;  and  on  Sunday  the  31st  of  December,  1780, 
we  received  information  that  a  fleet  had  entered  our  capes.  It 
happened  fortunately  that  our  legislature  was  at  that  moment  in 
session,  and  within  two  days  of  their  rising,  so  that,  during 
these  two  days,  we  had  the  benefit  of  their  presence,  and  of  the 
counsel  and  information  of  the  members  individually.  On  Mon- 
day the  1st  of  January,  we  were  in  suspense  as  to  the  destina- 
tion of  this  fleet,  whether  up  the  bay,  or  up  our  river.  On 
Tuesday  at  10  o'clock,  however,  we  received  information  that 
they  had  entered  James  river  ;  and,  on  general  advice,  we  in- 
stantly prepared  orders  for  calling  in  the  militia,  one-half  from 
the  nearer  counties,  and  a  fourtli  from  the  more  remote,  which 
would  constitute  a  force  of  between  four  and  five  thousand  men, 
of  which  orders  the  members  of  the  legislature,  which  adjourned 
that  day,  took  charge,  each  to  his  respective  county  ;  and  we  be- 
gan the  removal  of  everything  from  Richmond.  The  wind  be- 
ing fair  and  strong,  the  enemy  ascended  the  river  as  rapidly  al- 
most as  the  expresses  could  ride,  who  were  dispatched  to  us  from 
time  to  time,  to  notify  their  progress.  At  5  P.  M.  on  Thursday, 
we  learnt  that  they  had  then  been  three  hours  landed  at  Westover. 
The  whole  militia  of  the  adjacent  counties  were  now  called  for, 
and  to  come  on  individually,  without  waiting  any  regular  array. 
At  1  P.  M.  the  next  day,  (Friday,)  they  entered  Richmond,  and 
on  Saturday,  after  twenty-four  hours  possession,  burning  some 
houses,  destroying  property,  &c.,  they  retreated,  encamped  that 
evening  ten  miles  below,  and  reached  their  shipping  at  Westover 
the  next  day,  (Sunday.) 

By  this  time  had  assembled  three  hundred  militia  under  Col- 
onel Nicholas,  six  miles  above  Westover,  and  two  hundred  under 
General  Nelson,  at  Charles  city  Court  House,  eight  miles  below. 
Two  or  three  hundred  at  Petersburg  had  put  themselves  under 
General  Smallwood,  of  Maryland,  accidentally  there  on  his  pas- 
sage through  the  State  ;  and  Baron  Steuben  with  eight  hun(ired, 


446  JEFFERSON'S   TS'ORKS. 

and  Colonel  Gibson  with  one  thousand,  were  also  on  the  south 
side  of  James  river,  aiming  to  reach  Hood's  before  the  enemy 
should  have  passed  it,  where  they  hoped  they  could  arrest  them. 
But  the  wind,  having  shifted,  carried  them  down  as  prosperously 
as  it  had  brought  them  up  the  river.  Within  the  first  five  days 
therefore,  about  twenty-five  hundred  men  had  collected  at  three 
or  four  different  points,  ready  for  junction.  I  was  absent  myself 
from  Richmond  (but  always  within  observing  distance  of  the 
enemy)  three  days  only,  during  which  I  was  never  off  my  horse 
but  to  take  food  or  rest,  and  was  everywhere  where  my  presence 
could  be  of  any  service  ;  and  I  may  with  confidence  challenge 
any  one  to  put  his  finger  on  the  point  of  time  when  I  was  in  a  state 
of  remissness  from  any  duty  of  my  station.  But  I  was  not  with 
the  army  !  true  ;  for  first,  where  was  it  ?  second,  I  was  engaged 
in  the  more  important  function  of  taking  measures  to  collect  an 
army ;  and,  without  military  education  myself,  instead  of  jeopard- 
izing the  public  safety  by  pretending  to  take  its  command,  of 
which  I  knew  nothing,  I  had  committed  it  to  persons  of  the  art, 
men  who  knew  how  to  make  the  best  use  of  it,  to  Steuben  for 
instance,  to  Nelson  and  others,  possessing  that  military  skill  and 
experience,  of  which  I  had  none. 

Let  our  condition,  too,  at  that  time  be  duly  considered.  With- 
out arms,  without  money  of  effect,  without  a  regular  soldier  in 
the  State,  or  a  regular  officer,  except  Steuben,  a  militia  scattered 
over  the  country,  and  called  at  a  moment's  warning  to  leave  their 
families  and  firesides,  in  the  dead  of  winter,  to  meet  an  enemy 
ready  marshalled,  and  prepared  at  all  points  to  receive  them. 
Yet  had  time  been  given  them  by  the  hasty  retreat  of  that  ene- 
my, I  have  no  doubt  but  the  rush  to  arms,  and  to  the  protection 
of  their  country,  would  have  been  as  rapid  and  universal  as  in 
the  invasion  during  our  late  war,  when,  at  the  first  moment  of 
notice,  our  citizens  rose  in  mass,  from  every  part  of  the  State, 
and  without  waiting  to  be  marshalled  by  their  officers,  armed 
themselves,  and  marched  off  by  ones  and  by  twos,  as  quickly  as 
they  could  equip  themselves.  Of  the  individuals  of  the  same 
house  one  would  start  in  the  morning,  a  second  at  noon,  a  third 


CORRESPONDENCE.  447 

in  the  evening,  no  one  waiting  an  hour  for  the  company  of 
another.  This  I  saw  myself  on  the  late  occasion,  and  should 
have  seen  on  the  former  had  wind,  and  tide,  and  a  HoM'e,  in- 
stead of  an  Arnold,  slackened  their  pace  ever  so  little. 

And  is  the  surprise  of  an  open  and  unarmed  place,  although 
called  a  city,  and  even  a  capital,  so  unprecedented  as  to  be  a 
matter  of  indelible  reproach  ?  Which  of  our  own  capitals  dur- 
ing the  same  war,  was  not  in  possession  of  the  same  enemy,  not 
merely  by  surprise  and  for  a  day  only,  but  })ermanently  ?  That 
of  Georgia  ?  of  South  Carolina  ?  North  Carolina  ?  Pennsylvania  ? 
New  York  ?  Connecticut?  Rhode  Island  ?  Massachusetts?  And 
if  others  were  not,  it  was  because  the  enemy  saw  no  object  in 
taking  possession  of  them.  Add  to  the  list  in  the  late  war, 
Washington,  the  metropolis  of  the  Union,  covered  by  a  fort, 
with  troops  and  a  dense  population.  And  what  capital  on  the 
continent  of  Europe,  (St.  Petersburg  and  its  regions  of  ice  ex- 
cepted,) did  not  Bonaparte  take  and  hold  at  his  pleasure  ?  Is  it 
then  just  that  Richmond  and  its  authorities  alone  should  be 
placed  under  the  reproach  of  history,  because,  in  a  moment  of 
peculiar  denudation  of  resources,  by  the  coup  de  main  of  an 
enemy,  led  on  by  the  hand  of  fortune  directing  the  winds  and 
weather  to  their  wishes,  it  was  surprised  and  held  for  twenty- 
four  hours  ?  Or  strange  that  that  enemy  with  such  advantages, 
should  be  enabled  then  to  get  off,  without  risking  the  honors  he 
had  achieved  by  burnings  and  destructions  of  property  peculiar 
to  his  principles  of  warfare  ?  We,  at  least,  may  leave  these 
glories  to  their  own  trumpet. 

During  this  crisis  of  trial  I  was  left  alone,  unassisted  by  the 
co-operation  of  a  single  public  functionary.  For,  with  the 
legislature,  every  member  of  the  council  had  departed  to  take 
care  of  his  own  family.  Unaided  even  in  my  bodily  labors,  but 
by  my  horse,  and  he,  exhausted  at  length  by  fatigue,  .sunk  un- 
der me  in  the  public  road,  where  I  had  to  leave  him,  and  with 
my  saddle  and  bridle  on  my  shoulders,  to  walk  afoot  to  the  near- 
est farm,  where  I  borrowed  an  unbroken  colt,  and  proceeded 


448  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

to  Manchester,  opposite   to  Richmond,  which   the  enemy  had 
evacuated  a  few  hours  before; 

Without  further  pursuing  these  minute  details,  I  will  here  ask 
the  favor  of  you  to  turn  to  Girardin's  History  of  Virginia,  where 
such  of  them  as  are  worthy  the  notice  of  history,  are  related  in 
that  scale  of  extension  which  its  objects  admit.  That  work 
was  written  at  Milton,  within  two  or  three  miles  of  Monticello ; 
and  at  the  request  of  the  author,  I  communicated  to  him  every 
paper  I  possessed  on  the  subject,  of  which  he  made  the  use  he 
thought  proper  for  his  work.  [See  his  pages  453,  460,  and  the 
appendix  xi. — xv.]  I  can  assure  you  of  the  truth  of  every  fact 
he  has  drawn  from  these  papers,  and  of  the  genuineness  of  such 
as  he  has  taken  the  trouble  of  copying.  It  happened  that  dur- 
ing those  eight  days  of  incessant  labor,  for  the  benefit  of  my 
own  memory,  I  carefully  noted  every  circumstance  worth  ,it. 
These  memorandums  were  often  written  on  horseback,  and  on 
scraps  of  paper  taken  out  of  my  pocket  at  the  moment,  fortu- 
nately preserved  to  this  day,  and  now  lying  before  me.  I  wish 
you  could  see  them.  But  my  papers  of  that  period  are  stitched 
together  in  large  masses,  and  so  tattered  and  tender  as  not  to  ad- 
mit removal  further  than  from  their  shelves  to  a  reading  table. 
They  bear  an  internal  evidence  of  fidelity  which  must  carry 
conviction  to  every  one  who  sees  them.  We  have  nothing  in 
our  neighborhood  which  could  compensate  the  trouble  of  a  visit 
to  it,  unless  perhaps  our  University,  which  I  believe  you  have 
not  seen,  and  I  can  assure  you  is  worth  seeing.  Should  you 
think  so,  I  would  ask  as  much  of  your  time  at  Monticello  as 
would  enable  you  to  examine  these  papers  at  your  ease.  Many 
others  too  are  interspersed  among  them,  which  have  relation  to 
your  object,  many  letters  from  Generals  Gates,  Greene,  Stephens 
and  others  engaged  in  the  Southern  war,  and  in  the  North  also. 
All  should  be  laid  open  to  you  without  reserve,  for  there  is 
not  a  truth  existing  which  I  fear,  or  would  wish  unknown  to  the 
whole  world.  During  the  invasions  of  Arnold,  Phillips  and 
Cornwallis,  until  my  time  of  office  had  expired,  I  made  it  a 
point,  once  a  week,  hy  letters  to  the  President  of  Congress,  and 


OOREESPOKDENOE.  449 

to  General  Washington,  to  give  them  an  exact  narrative  of  the 
transactions  of  the  week.  These  letters  should  still  he  in  the 
office  of  state  in  Washington,  and  in  the  presses  at  Mount  Ver- 
non. Or,  if  the  former  were  destroyed  hy  the  conflagrations 
of  the  British,  the  latter  ai-e  surely  safe,  and  may  be  appealed  to 
in  corroboration  of  what  I  have  now  written. 

There  is  another  transaction,  very  erroneously  stated  in  the 
same  work,  which  although  not  concerning  myself,  is  within  my 
own  knowledge,  and  I  think  it  a  duty  to  communicate  it  to  yon. 
I  am  sorry  that  not  being  in  possession  of  a  copy  of  the  me- 
moirs, I  am  not  able  to  quote  the  page,  and  still  less  the  facts 
themselves,  verbatim  from  the  text.  But  of  the  substance,  as 
recollected,  I  am  certain.  It  is  said  there  that,  about  the  time 
of  Tarleton's  expedition  up  the  north  branch  of  James  river  to 
Charlottesville  and  Monticello,  Simcoe  was  detached  up  the 
southern  branch,  and  penetrated  as  far  as  New  London,  in  Bed- 
ford, where  he  destroyed  a  depot  of  arms,  &c.,  <fcc.  I  was  with 
my  family,  at  the  time,  at  a  possession  I  have  within  three  milef 
of  New  London,  and  I  can  assure  you  of  my  own  knowledge 
that  he  did  not  advance  to  within  fifty  miles  of  New  London. 
Having  reached  the  lower  end  of  Buckingham,  as  I  have  under- 
stood, he  heard  of  a  deposit  of  arms,  and  a  party  of  new  recruits 
under  Baron  Steuben,  somewhere  in  Prince  Edward  ;  he  left  the 
Buckingham  road  immediately,  at  or  near  Francisco's,  pushed  di- 
rectly south  at  this  new  object,  was  disappointed,  and  returned 
to  and  down  James  river  to  head  quarters.  I  had  then  returned 
to  Monticello  myself,  and  from  thence  saw  the  smokes  of  his 
conflagration  of  houses  and  property  on  that  river,  as  they  suc- 
cessively arose  in  the  horizon  at  a  distance  of  twenty-five  or 
thirty  miles.  1  must  repeat  that  his  excursion  from  Francisco's 
is  not  from  my  own  knowledge,  but  as  I  have  heard  it  from  the 
inhabitants  on  the  Buckingham  road,  which  for  many. years  I 
travelled  six  or  eight  times  a  year.  The  particulars  of  that, 
therefore,  may  need  inquiry  and  correction. 

These  are  all  the  recollections  within   the  scope  of  your  re- 
quest, which  I  can  state  with   precision  and  certainty ;  and  of 

VOL.  VII.  29 


450  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

these  you  are  free  to  make  -what  use  you  think  proper  in  the  new 
edition  of  your  father's  work  ;  and  with  which  I  pray  you  to 
accept  the  assurances  of  my  great  esteem  and  respect. 


TO    MR.    WEIGHTMAN. 

MoNTiCEi.Lo,  June  24,  1826. 

Respected  Sir, — The  kind  invitation  I  receive  from  you,  on 
the  part  of  the  citizens  of  the  city  of  Washington,  to  be  present 
with  them  at  their  celebration  on  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of 
American  Independence,  as  one  of  the  surviving  signers  of  an 
instrument  pregnant  with  our  own,  and  the  fate  of  the  world,  is 
most  flattering  to  myself,  and  heightened  by  the  honorable  ac- 
companiment proposed  for  the  comfort  of  such  a  journey.  It 
adds  sensibly  to  the  sufferings  of  sickness,  to  be  deprived  by  it 
of  a  personal  participation  in  the  rejoicings  of  that  day.  But  ac- 
quiescence is  a  duty,  under  circumstances  not  placed  among 
those  we  are  permitted  to  control.  I  should,  indeed,  with  pe- 
culiar delight,  have  met  and  exchanged  there  congratulations 
personally  with  the  small  band,  the  remnant  of  that  host  of 
worthies,  who  joined  with  us  on  that  day,  in  the  bold  and  doubt- 
ful election  we  were  to  make  for  our  country,  between  submiss- 
ion or  the  sword ;  and  to  have  enjoyed  with  them  the  consola- 
tory fact,  that  our  fellow  citizens,  after  half  a  century  of  ex- 
perience and  prosperity,  continue  to  approve  the  choice  we  made. 
May  it  be  to  the  world,  what  I  believe  it  will  be,  (to  some  parts 
sooner,  to  others  later,  hut  finally  to  all,)  the  signal  of  arousing 
men  to  burst  the  chains  under  which  monkish  ignorance  and 
superstition  had  persuaded  them  to  bind  themselves,  and  to  as- 
sume the  blessings  and  security  of  self-government.  That  form 
which  we  have  substituted,  restores  the  free  right  to  the  un- 
bounded exercise  of  reason  and  freedom  of  opinion.  All  eye^ 
are  opened,  or  opening,  to  the  rights  of  man.  The  general 
spread  of  the  light  of  science  has  already  laid  open  to  every  view 
the  palpable  truth,  that  the  mass  of  mankind  has  not  been  bora 


OOREESPONDENOE.  451 

with  saddles  on  their  backs,  nor  a  favored  few  booted  and 
spurred,  ready  to  ride  them  legitimately,  by  the  grace  of  God. 
These  are  grounds  of  hope  for  others.  For  ourselves,  let  the 
annual  return  of  this  day  forever  refresh  our  recollections  of 
these  rights,  and  an  undiminished  devotion  to  them. 

I  will  ask  permission  here  to  express  the  pleasure  with  which  I 
should  have  met  my  ancient  neighbors  of  the  city  of  Washington 
and  its  vicinities,  with  whom  1  passed  so  many  years  of  a  pleasing 
social  intercourse ;  an  intercourse  which  so  much  relieved  the 
anxieties  of  the  public  cares,  and  left  impressions  so  deeply  en- 
graved in  my  affections,  as  never  to  be  forgotten.  With  my  regret 
that  ill  health  forbids  me  the  gratification  of  an  acceptance,  be 
pleased  to  receive  for  yourself,  and  those  for  whom  you  write,  the 
assurance  of  my  highest  respect  and  friendly  attachments. 


BOOK    III. 
OFFICIAL    PAPERS 


PART  I.— REPORTS  AND  OPINIONS  WHILE  SECRETARY 
OF  STATE. 
«     II.— INAUGURAL  ADDRESSES  AND  MESSAGES. 
"    m.— REPLIES  TO  PUBLIC  ADDRESSES. 
«    IV.— INDIAN  ADDRESSES. 


INTRODUCTOKY    TO    BOOK  III, 


This  division  of  the  work  embraces  all  the  important  official  papers  of  Thomas  Jeffersun,  frura  the 
?me  at  which  he  entered  upon  the  duties  of  the  Secretaryship  of  Slate  lo  the  end  of  his  Presr- 
dential  term,  with  the  exception  of  his  official  letters,  a  part  of  which  will  be  found  printed  in  Book 
II.,  devoted  to  his  general  correspondence,  both  official  and  piivate.  It  being  the  wish  of  the  Librw 
ry  commitlee,  umkr  whose  supervision  this  work  has  been  prepared,  that  it  should  be  compressed 
within  as  lew  volumes  as  was  consistent  with  justice  to  tiie  reputation  of  the  author,  and  the  great 
body  of  Mr- Jefferson's  official  letters  having  been  already  published  among  the  American  State  Papera 
and  Sparks'  Diplomatic  Correspondence,  the  moat  interesting  and  valuable  only  have  been  selected 
fo"  re-publication  in  this  work,  as  specimens  of  the  Author's  manner  in  the  preparation  of  such 
papers.     All  omitted  here  will  be  found  in  the  publications  ju-^t  referred  to. 

The  official  papers  embraced  in  this  division  of  the  work,  have  been  classified,  for  the  purposes 
ol  easy  reference,  under  the  following  heads: 

Part  {.-■Report'^  and  Opiniovs  while  Secretary  of  State. — Under  this  head  are  included  Jefferson's 
Reptirts  to  Congress,, which  have  been  published  before ;  also,  his  Reports  to  the  President,  and  his 
Cabinet  Opinions,  both  of  which  were  private,  and  are  now  for  the  first  time  given  to  the  pubUc. 
It  seems  to  have  been  the  practice  of  Washington,  to  take  ihe  written  opinions  of  his  Secreturies 
upon  important  points  arising  during  his  administration,  and  the  opinions  of  Jefferson,  here  puij- 
lished,  were  given  in  reply  to  question';  propounded  and  points  submitted  to  bim  by  the  Pri'sidem, 
in  conformity  with  this  practice.  They  relate  to  a  great  variety  of  matters  connected  with  the  early 
histor)-  of  our  guvernmeut,  and  the  principles  of  interpretation  to  be  applied  to  the  Federal  Con- 
stitution, and  will  be  found  interesting  and  valuable. 

Part  II. — Inaugural  Mddress  and  Messages. — During  the  administration  of  Washington  and 
Adams,  it  was  the  custom  of  Uie  Presifleni,  at  lire  opening  of  each  session  of  Congress,  lo  meet 
both  Houses  in  person,  and  deliver  a  written  speech,  to  which,  in  the  course  of  a  few  days,  each 
House  would  return  an  answer  Llir.>ugh  ii  commiltee  appointed  lo  wait  upon  him,  he,  at  tlie  same 
time,  returnine:  a  brief  reply  Mr.  Jefferson,  at  the  beginning  of  his  Presidential  term,  changed  this 
system,  instead  of  meeting  the  Houses  of  Congress  in  person,  and  addresyiug  lo  them  a  speech,  he 
sent  them  a  written  message,  thus  subslituiing  messages  for  speeches.  His  reasons  for  this  change 
were  the  greater  convenie!  ce  of  messages  over  speeches,  the  economy  of  time,  and  the  relief  of 
Congress  from  the  necessity  <tf  answering  on  subjects  in  regard  to  which  Ihey  were  often  very  im- 
perleclly  informed.  The  generMl  opinion  of  the  counlry  at  Ihe  time  seems  lo  have  approved 
the  change  ;  and  the  mode  of  communicating  with  Congress  by  messages  in  preference  to  speeches, 
has  been  invariably  adopted  by  the  Presidents  ever  since. 

This  d  vision  of  the  work  contains  Jefferson's  Inaugural  Address  and  regular  and  special  messages. 

Part  Wl.—Rrpiics  to  Public  Jiddrcsses. — The  public  addresses  received  by  Mr.  Jefferson,  and 
answered  by  him,  were  very  numerous.  This  was  particularly  the  oise  at  the  time  of  the  Embargo', 
the  attack  on  the  Chesapeake,  and  the  termination  of  his  Presidential  service.  The  pinn  of  this 
work  doe.->  not  admit  the  publication  of  the  whole  of  ihete  Addresses  and  Replies;  nor,  indeed, 
is  there  any  neccs^ty  for  it.  It  is  only  necessary  that  a  few  of  the  Repl  es  should  be  published,  as 
specimens  of  the  rest.  This  has  been  done,  selecting  such  as  have  the  highest  claim,  and  omitting 
none  which  post^ess  any  historical  value. 

pAHT  rv  — hidiai)  JiddresfPf. — There  is  a  number  of  these  Addresses.  They  possess  a  certain 
interest  as  exinbiiing  the  liumane  policy  of  our  government  towards  the  Indians,  our  efforts  to 
civilize  them,  to  make  them  agriculiuj-idts,  to  keep  them  at  peace  with  ourselves  and  with  eacli 
(jilier  and  the  manner  in  which  their  lands  we  o  acquired  from  them,-  always  bypurchase,  with 
their  own  free  cunsent.  Some  of  the  most  imp>riunt  have,  therefoi«,  been  incorporated  in  the 
work. 


PART    I. 

REPORTS  AND  OPINIONS  WHILE  SECRETARY  OF  STATE 


1. — Report  on  the  methods  for  obtaining  Fresh  Water  from  Salt. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred  by  the  House 
of  Representatives  of  the  United  States,  the  petition  of  Jacob 
Isaacs  of  Newport  in  Rhode  Island,  has  examined  into  the  truth 
and  importance  of  the  allegations  therein  set  forth,  and  makes 
thereon  the  following  report : 

The  petitioner  sets  forth,  that  by  various  experiments,  with 
considerable  labor  and  expense,  he  has  discovered  a  method  of 
converting  salt-water  into  fresh,  in  the  proportion  of  8  parts  out  of 
10,  by  a  process  so  simple  that  it  may  be  performed  on  board  of 
vessels  at  sea  by  the  common  iron  caboose,  with  small  altera- 
tions, by  the  same  fire,  and  in  the  same  time,  which  is  used  foi 
cooking  the  ship's  provisions,  and  offers  to  convey  to  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  a  faithful  account  of  his  art  or  secret, 
to  be  used  by,  or  within  the  United  States,  on  their  giving  to 
him  a  reward  suitable  to  the  importance  of  the  discovery,  and  in 
the  opinion  of  government,  adequate  to  his  expenses  and  the  time 
he  has  devoted  to  the  bringing  it  into  effect. 

In  order  to  ascertain  the  merit  of  the  petitioner's  di.scovery,  it 
becomes  necessary  to  examine  the  advances  already  made  in  the 
art  of  converting  salt-water  into  fresh. 

Lord  Bacon,  to  whoiii  the  world  is  indebted  for  the  first  germs 


456  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

of  so  many  branches  of  science,  had  observed,  that  with  a  heat 
sufficient  for  distiiiation,  salt  will  not  rise  in  vapor,  and  that  salt- 
water distilled  is  fresh ;  and  it  would  seena,  that  all  mankind 
might  have  observed  that  the  earth  is  supplied  with  fresh  water 
chiefly  by  exhalation  from  the  sea,  which  is,  in  fact,  an  insensi- 
ble distillation  effected  by  the  heat  of  the  sun  ;  yet  this,  although 
the  most  obvious,  was  not  the  first  idea  in  the  essays  for  convert- 
ing salt-water  into  fresh  ;  filtration  was  tried  in  vain,  and  congel- 
ation could  be  resorted  to  only  in  the  coldest  regions  and  seasons. 
In  all  the  earlier  trials  by  distillation,  some  mixture  was  thought 
necessary  to  aid  the  operation  by  a  partial  precipitation  of  the 
salt,  and  other  foreign  matters  contained  in  sea-water.  Of  this 
kind,  were  the  methods  of  Sir  Richard  Hawkins  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  of  Glauber,  Hauton,  and  Lister,  in  the  seventeenth,  and 
of  Hales,  Appleby,  Butler,  Chapman,  Hoffman,  and  Dore,  in  the 
eighteenth  ;  nor  was  there  anything  in  these  methods  worthy 
noting  on  the  present  occasion,  except  the  very  simple  still  con- 
trived extempore  by  Captain  Chapman,  and  made  from  such  ma- 
terials as  are  to  be  found  on  board  every  ship,  great  or  small ; 
this  was  a  common  pot,  with  a  wooded  lid  of  the  usual  form  ;  in 
the  centre  of  which  a  hole  was  bored  to  receive  perpendicularly, 
a  short  wooden  tube  made  with  an  inch-and-a-half  auger,  which 
perpendicular  tube  received  at  its  top,  and  at  an  acute  angle,  an- 
other tube  of  wood  also,  which  descended  until  it  joined  a  third 
of  pewter  made  by  rolling  up  a,  dish  and  passing  it  obliquely 
through  a  cask  of  cold  water ;  with  this  simple  machine  he  ob- 
tained two  quarts  of  fresh  water  an  hour,  and  observed  that  the 
expense  of  fuel  would  be  very  trifling,  if  the  still  was  contrived 
to  stand  on  the  fire  along  with  the  ship's  boiler. 

In  1762,  Doctor  Lind,  proposing  to  make  experiment  of  sever- 
al different  mixtures,  first  distilled  rain-water,  which  he  supposed 
would  be  the  purest,  and  then  sea-water,-  without  any  mixture, 
which  he  expected  would  be  the  least  pure,  in  order  to  arrange 
between  these  two  supposed  extremes,  the  degree  of  merit  of  the 
several  ingredients  he  meant  to  try;  "to  his  great  surprise,"  as 
he  confesses,  the  sea-water  distilled  without  any  mixture,  was 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  457 

as  pure  as  the  rain-water  ;  he  pursued  the  discovery  and  estab- 
hshed  the  fact,  that  a  pure  and  potable  fresh  water  may  be  ob 
tained  from  salt-water  by  simple  distillation,  without  the  aid  of 
any  mixture  for  fining  or  precipitating  its  foreign  contents.  In 
1767,  he  proposed  an  extempore  still,  which,  in  fact,  was  Chap- 
man's, only  substituting  a  gun-barrel  instead  of  Chapman's  pew- 
ter tube,  and  the  hand-pump  of  the  ship  to  be  cut  in  two  oblique- 
ly and  joined  again  at  an  acure  angle,  instead  of  Chapman's 
wooden  tubes  bored  expressly ;  or  instead  of  the  wooden  lid  and 
upright  tube,  he  proposed  a  tea-kettle  (without  its  lid  or  handle) 
to  be  turned  bottom  upwards  over  the  mouth  of  the  pot  by  way 
of  still-head,  and  a  wooden  tube  leading  from  the  spout  to  a  gun- 
bari'el  passing  through  a  cask  of  water,  the  whole  luted  with 
equal  parts  of  chalk  and  meal  moistened  with  salt-water.  With 
this  apparatus  of  a  pot,  tea-kettle,  and  gun-barrel,  the  Dolphin,  a 
twenty-gun  ship,  in  her  voyage  around  the  world  in  1768,  from 
56  gallons  of  sea-water  and  with  9  lbs.  of  wood  and  69  lbs.  of  pit- 
coal  made  42  gallons  of  good  fresh  water,  at  the  rate  of  8  gallons 
an  hour.  The  Dorsetshire,  in  her  passage  from  Gibraltar  to  Ma- 
hon  in  1769,  made  19  quarts  of  pure  water  in  four  hours  with 
10  lbs.  of  wood,  and  the  Slambal  in  1773,  between  Bombay  and 
Bengal,  with  the  hand-pump,  gun-barrel,  and  a  pot  of  6  gallons 
of  sea- water,  made  ten  quarts  of  fresh  water  in  three  hours. 

In  1771,  Dr.  Irvin  putting  together  Lind's  idea  of  distilling 
without  a  mixture.  Chapman's  st^l,  and  Dr.  Franklin's  method  of 
cooling  by  evaporation,  obtained  a  premium  of  five  thousand 
pounds  from  the  British  parliament.  He  wet  his  tube  constantly 
with  a  mop  instead  of  passing  it  through  a  cask  of  water ;  he  en- 
larged its  bore  also,  in  order  to  give  a  free  passage  to  the  vapor, 
and  thereby  increase  its  quantity  by  lessening  the  resistance  or 
pressure  on  the  evaporating  surface.  This  last  improvement  was 
his  own ;  it  doubtless  contributed  to  the  success  of  his  process ;  and 
we  may  suppose  the  enlargement  of  the  tube  to  be  useful  to  that 
point  at  which  the  central  parts  of  the  vapor  passing  through  it 
would  begin  to  escape  condensation.  Lord  Mulgrave  used  his 
method  in  his  voyage  towards  the  north  pole  in  1773.  making 


458  JEFFERSON'S    "WORKS. 

fr6m  34  to  40  gallons  of  fresh  water  a  day,  without  any  great 
addition  of  fuel,  as  he  says. 

M.  de  Bougainville,  in  his  voyage  round  the  world,  used  very 
successfully  a  still  which  had  been  contrived  in  1763  by  Poyssn- 
nier  to  guard  against  the  water  being  thrown  over  from  the  boil- 
er into  the  pipe,  by  the  agitation  of  the  ship.  In  this,  one  singu' 
larity  was,  that  the  furnace  or  fire-box  was  in  the  middle  of  the 
boiler,  so  that  the  water  surrounded  it  in  contact.  This  still, 
however,  was  expensive,  and  occupied  much  room. 

Such  was  the  advances  already  made  in  the  art  of  obtaining 
fresh  from  salt-water,  when  Mr.  Isaacs,  the  petitioner,  suggested 
his  discovery.  As  the  merit  of  this  could  be  ascertained  by  ex- 
periment only,  the  Secretary  of  State  asked  the  favor  of  Mr.  Rit- 
tenhouse,  President  of  the  American  Philosophical  Society,  of 
Dr.  Wistar,  professor  of  chemistry  in  the  college  at  Philadelphia, 
and  Dr.  Hutchinson,  professor  of  chemistry  in  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania,  to  be  present  at  the  experiments.  Mr.  Isaacs  fixed 
the  pot,  a  small  caboose,  with  a  tin  cap  and  straight  tube  of  tin 
passing  obliquely  through  a  cask  of  cold  water ;  he  made  use  of  a 
mixture,  the  composition  of  which  he  did  not  explain,  and  from 
24  pints  of  sea-water,  taken  up  about  three  miles  out  of  the  Capes 
of  Delaware,  at  flood-tide,  he  distilled  22  pints  of  fresh  water  in 
four  hours  with  20  lbs.  of  seasoned  pine,  which  was  a  little  wetted 
by  having  lain  in  the  rain. 

In  a  second  experiment  of  the  21st  of  March,  performed  in  a 
furnace,  and  five-gallon  still  at  the  college,  from  32  pints  of  sea- 
water  he  drew  31  pints  of  fresh  water  in  7  hours  and  24  minutes, 
with  51  lbs.  of  hickory,  which  had  been  cut  about  six  months. 
In  order  to  decide  whether  Mr.  Isaacs'  mixture  contributed  m 
any  and  what  degree  to  the  success  of  the  operation,  it  was 
thought  proper  to  repeat  his  experiment  under  the  same  circum- 
stances exactly,  except  the  omission  of  the  mixture.  According- 
ly, on  the  next  day,  the  same  quantity  of  sea-water  was  put  into 
the  same  still,  the  same  furnace  was  used,  and  fuel  from  the 
same  parcel ;  it  yielded,  as  his  had  done,  31  pints  fresh  water  ic 
11  minutes  more  of  time,  and  with  10  lbs.  less  of  wood. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  459 

Ori  the  24th  of  March,  Mr.  Isaacs  performed  a  third  experi- 
ment. For  this,  a  common  iron  pot  of  three  and  a  half  gallons 
was  fixed  in  brick  work,  and  the  flue  from  the  hearth  wound 
once  around  this  pot  spirally,  and  then  passed  oflf  up  a  chim- 
ney. 

The  cap  was  of  tin,  and  a  straight  tin  tube  o  about  two  inches 
diameter  passing  obliquely  through  a  barrel  of  water,  served  in- 
stead of  a  worm.  From  sixteen  pints  of  sea-water  he  drew  off 
fifteen  pints  of  fresh  water,  in  two  hours  fifty-five  minutes,  with 
3  lbs.  of  dry  hickory  and  8  lbs.  of  seasoned  pine.  This  experi- 
ment was  also  repeated  the  next  day,  with  the  same  apparatus, 
and  fuel  from  the  same  parcel ;  but  without  the  mixture,  six- 
teen pints  of  sea-water  yielded  in  like  manner  fifteen  pints 
of  fresh  in  one  minute  more  of  time,  and  with  i  lb.  less  of 
wood.  On  the  whole,  it  was  evident  that  Mr.  Isaacs'  mixture 
produced  no  advantage  either  in  the  process  or  result  of  the  dis- 
tillation. 

The  distilled  water  in  all  these  instances,  was  found  on  experi- 
ment to  be  as  pure  as  the  best  pump  water  of  the  city ;  its  taste, 
indeed,  was  not  as  agreeable,  but  it  was  not  such  as  to  produce 
any  disgust.  In  fact,  we  drink,  in  common  life,  in  many  places, 
and  under  many  circumstances,  and  almost  always  at  sea,  a  worse 
tasted  and  probably  a  less  wholesome  water. 

The  obtaining  fresh  from  salt-water  was  for  ages  considered 
as  an  important  desideratum  for  the  use  of  navigators.  The 
process  for  doing  this  by  simple  distillation  is  so  efficacious,  the 
erecting  an  extempore  still  with  such  utensils  as  are  found  on 
board  of  every  ship,  is  so  practicable,  as  to  authorize  the  assertion 
that  this  desideratum  is  satisfied  to  a  very  useful  degree.  But 
though  this  has  been  done  for  upwards  of  thirty  years,  though 
its  reality  has  been  established  by  the  actual  experience  of  sev- 
eral vessels  which  have  had  recourse  to  it,  yet  neither  the  fact 
nor  the  process  is  known  to  the  mass  of  seamen,  to  whom  it 
would  be  the  most  useful,  and  for  whom  it  was  principally  want- 
ed. The  Secretary  of  State  is  therefore  of  opinion  that  since 
the  subject  has  now  been  brought  under  obsei-vation,  it  should  be 


460  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

made  the  occasion  of  disseminating  its  knowledge  generally  and 
effectually  among  the  seafaring  citizens  of  the  United  States. 
The  following  is  one  of  the  many  methods  which  might  be  pro- 
posed for  doing  this :  Let  the  clearance  for  every  vessel  sailing 
from  the  ports  of  the  United  States  be  printed  on  a  paper,  in  the 
back  whereof  shall  be  a  printed  account  of  the  essays  which 
have  been  made  for  obtaining  fresh  from  salt-water,  mentioning 
shortly  those  which  have  been  unsuccessful,  and  more  fully  those 
which  have  succeeded,  describing  the  methods  which  have  been 
found  to  answer  for  constructing  extempore  stills  of  such  im- 
plements as  are  generally  on  board  of  every  vessel,  with  a  rec- 
ommendation in  all  cases  where  they  shall  have  occasion  to  re- 
sort to  this  expedient  for  obtaining  water,  to  publish  the  result 
of  their  trial  in  some  gazette  on  their  return  to  the  United  States, 
or  to  communicate  it  for  publication  to  the  office  of  the  Secre- 
tary of  State,  in  order  that  others  may,  by  their  success,  be  en- 
couraged to  make  similar  trials,  and  be  benefited  by  any  im- 
provements or  new  ideas  which  may  occur  to  them  in  practice. 


II.   Opinion  on  the  proposition  for  establishing  a  Woollen 
Manufactory  in  Virginia. 

The  House  of  Delegates  of  Virginia  seemed  disposed  to  ad- 
venture £2,500  for  the  encouragement  of  this  undertaking,  but 
the  Senate  did  not  concur.  By  their  returning  to  the  subject, 
however,  at  a  subsequent  session,  and  wishing  more  specific  propo- 
sitions, it  is  probable  they  might  be  induced  to  concur,  if  they 
saw  a  certain  provision  that  their  money  would  not  be  paid  for 
nothing.  Some  unsuccessful  experiments  heretofore  may  have 
suggested  this  caution. 

Suppose  the  propositions  brought  into  some  such  shape  as  this : 
The  undertaker  is  to  contribute  £1,000,  the  State  £2,500,  viz. : 
the  undertaker  having  laid  out  his  £1,000  in  the  necessary  im- 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  461 

plemeiits  to  be  brought  from  Europe,  and  these  being  lauded  in 

Virginia  as  a  security  that  he  will  proceed,  let  the  State  pay  for 
the  first  necessary  purposes  then  to  occur  .         .  £1,000 

Let  it  pay  him  a  stipend  of  £100  a  year  for  the  first  three 
years 300 

Let  it  give  him  a  bounty  (suppose  one-third)  on  every 
yard  of  woollen  cloth  equal  to  good  plains,  which  he 
shall  weave  for  five  years,  not  exceeding  £250  a  year 
(20,000  yards)  the  four  first  years,  and  £200  the  fifth      1,200 


£2.500 


To  every  workman  whom  he  shall  import,  let  them  give,  after 
he  shall  have  worked  in  the  manufactory  five  years,  warrants  for 

acres  of  land,  and  pay  the  expenses  of  survey,  patents,  &c. 

[This  last  article  is  to  meet  the  proposition  of  the  undertaker.  I 
do  not  like  it,  because  it  tends  to  draw  ofi"  the  manufacturer  from 
his'trade.  I  should  better  like  a  premium  to  him  on  his  contin- 
uance in  it ;  as,  for  instance,  that  he  should  be  free  from  State 
taxes  as  long  as  he  should  carry  on  his  trade.] 

The  President's  intervention  seems  necessary  till  the  contracts 
shall  be  concluded.  It  is  presumed  he  would  not  like  to  be  em- 
barrassed afterwards  with  the  details  of  superintendence.  Sup- 
pose, in  his  answer  to  the  Governor  of  Virginia,  he  should  say 
that  the  undertaker  being  in  Europe,  more  specific  propositions 
cannot  be  obtained  from  him  in  time  to  be  laid  before  this  assem- 
bly ;  that  in  order  to  secure  to  the  State  the  benefits  of  the  es- 
tablishment, and  yet  guard  them  against  an  unproductive  grant 
of  money,  he  thinks  some  plan  like  the  preceding  one  might  be 
proposed  to  the  undertaker. 

That  as  it  is  not  known  whether  he  would  accept  it  exactly  in 
that  form,  it  might  disappoint  the  views  of  the  State  were  they 
to  prescribe  that  or  any  other  form  rigorously,  consequently  that 
a  discretionary  power  must  be  given  to  a  certain  extent. 

That  he  would  willingly  cooperate  with  their  executive  in 
effecting  the  contract,  and  certainly  would  not  conclude  it  on  any 
terms  worse  for  the  State  than  those  before  explained,  and  that 


462  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

the  contracts  being  once  concluded,  his  distance  and  other  occu- 
pations would  oblige  him  to  leave  the  execution  open  to  the  Ex- 
ecutive of  the  State. 


III.    The  Report  on  Copper  Coinage,  communicated  to  the 
House  of  Representatives,  April  15th,  1790. 

Api'H  14.  1790, 

The   Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred,  by  the  House 
of  Representatives,  the  letter  of  John  H.  Mitchell,  reciting  cer- 
tain proposals  for  supplying  the  United   States  with  copper 
coinage,  has  had  the  same  under  consideration,  according  to 
instructions,  and  begs  leave  to  report  thereon  as  follows : 
The  person  who  wishes  to  undertake  the  supply  of  a  copper 
coinage,  sets  forth,  that  the  superiority  of  his  apparatus  and  pro- 
cess for  coining,  enables  him  to  furnish  a  coinage  better  and 
cheaper  than  can  be  done  by  any  country  or  person  whatever ; 
that  his  dies  are  engraved  by  the   first  artist  in  that  line  in 
Europe  ;  that  his  apparatus  for  striking   the  edge   at  the   same 
blow  with  the  faces,  is  new,  and  singularly  ingenious  ;  that  he 
coins  by  a  press  on  a  new  principle,  and  worked  by  a  fire-engine, 
more  regularly  than  can  be  done  by  hand  ;  that  he  will  deliver 
any  quantity  of  coin,  of  any  size  and  device,  of  pure,  unalloyed 
copper,  wrapped  in  paper  and   packed  in  casks,  ready  for  shipr 
ping,  for  fourteen  pence  sterling  the  pound. 

The  Secretary  of  State  has  before  been  apprized,  from  other 
sources  of  information,  of  the  great  improvements  made  by  this 
undertaker,  in  sundry  arts  ;  he  is  acquainted  with  the  artist  who 
invented  the  method  of  striking  the  edge,  and  both  faces  of  the 
coin  at  one  blow ;  he  has  seen  his  process  and  coins,  and  sent  to 
the  former  Congress  some  specimens  of  them,  with  certain  offers 
froHi  him,  before  he  entered  into  the  service  of  the  present  under- 
taker, (which  specimens  he  takes  the  liberty  of  now  submitting 
to  the  inspection  of  the  House,  as  proofs  of  the  superiority  of 
this  method  of  coinage,  in  gold  and  silver  as  well  as  copper.) 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  463 

He  IS,  therefore,  of  opinion,  that  the  undertaker,  aided  by  that 
artist,  and  by  his  own  excellent  machines,  is  truly  in  a  condition 
to  furnish  coin  in  a  state  of  higher  perfection  than  has  ever  yet 
been  issued  by  any  nation ;  that  perfection  in  the  engraving  is 
among  the  greatest  safeguards  against  counterfeits,  because  en- 
gravers of  the  first  class  are  few,  and  elevated  by  their  rank  in 
their  art,  far  above  the  base  and  dangerous  business  of  counter- 
feiting. That  the  perfection  of  coins  will  indeed  disappear,  after 
they  are  for  some  time  worn  among  other  pieces,  and  especially 
where  the  figures  are  rather  faintly  relieved,  as  on  those  of  this 
artist;  yet,  their  high  finishing,  while  new,  is  not  the  less  a 
guard  against  counterfeits,  because  these,  if  carried  to  any  extent, 
may  be  ushered  into  circulation  new,  also,  and  consequently, 
may  be  compared  with  genuine  coins  in  the  same  state  ;  that, 
therefore,  whenever  the  United  States  shall  be  disposed  to  have 
a  coin  of  their  own,  it  will  be  desirable  to  aim  at  this  kind  of 
perfection.  That  this  cannot  be  better  efiected,  than  by  avail- 
ing themselves,  if  possible,  of  the  services  of  the  undertaker,  and 
of  this  artist,  whose  excellent  methods  and  machines  are  said  to 
have  abridged,  as  well  as  perfected,  the  operations  of  coinage. 
These  operations,  however,  and  their  expense,  being  new,  and 
unknown  here,  he  is  unable  to  say  whether  the  price  proposed 
be  reasonable  or  not.  He  is  also  uncertain  whether,  instead  of 
the  larger  copper  coin,  the  Legislature  might  not  prefer  a  lightei 
one  of  billon,  or  mixed  metal,  as  is  practised,  with  convenience, 
by  several  other  nations — a  specimen  of  which  kind  of  coinage 
is  submitted  to  their  inspection. 

But  the  propositions  under  consideration  suppose  that  the 
work  is  to  be  carried  on  in  a  foreign  country,  and  that  the  im- 
plements are  to  remain  the  property  of  the  undertaker ;  which 
conditions,  in  his  opinion,  render  them  inadmissible,  for  these 
reasons : 

Coinage  is  peculiarly  an  attribute  of  sovereignty.  To  transfer 
its  exercise  into  another  country,  is  to  submit  it  to  another  sov- 
ereign. 

Its  transportation  across  the  ocean,  besides  the  ordinary  dan- 


464  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

gers  of  the  sea,  would  expose  it  to  acts  of  piracy,  by  the  crews 
to  whom  it  would  be  confided,  as  well  as  by  others  apprized 
of  its  passage. 

In  time  of  war,  it  would  off'er  to  the  enterprises  of  an  enemy, 
what  have  been  emphatically  called  the  sinews  of  war. 

If  the  war  were  with  the  nation  within  whose  territory  the 
coinage  is,  the  first  act  of  war,  or  reprisal,  might  be  to  arrest  this 
operation,  with  the  implements  and  materials  coined  and  un- 
coined, to  be  used  at  their  discretion. 

The  reputation  and  principles  of  the  present  undertaker  are 
safeguards  against  the  abuses  of  a  coinage,  carried  on  in  a  foreign 
country,  where  no  checks  could  be  provided  by  the  proper  sov- 
ereign, no  regulations  established,  no  police,  no  guard  exercised ; 
in  short,  none  of  the  numerous  cautions  hitherto  thought  essen- 
tial at  every  mint ;  but  in  hands  less  entitled  to  confidence,  these 
will  become  dangers.  We  may  be  secured,  indeed,  by  proper 
experiments  as  to  the  purity  of  the  coin  delivered  us  according 
to  contract,  but  we  cannot  be  secured  against  that  which,  though 
less  piire,  shall  be  struck  in  the  genuine  die,  and  protected 
against  the  vigilance  of  Government,  till  it  shall  have  entered 
into  circulation. 

We  lose  the  opportunity  of  calling  in  and  re-coining  the  clipped 
money  in  circulation,  or  we  double  our  risk  by  a  double  trans- 
portation. 

We  lose,  in  like  manner,  the  resource  of  coining  up  our  house- 
hold plate  in  the  instant  of  great  distress. 

We  lose  the  means  of  forming  artists  to  continue  the  works, 
when  the  common  accidents  of  mortality  shall  have  deprived  us 
of  those  who  began  them. 

In  fine,  the  carrying  on  a  coinage  in  a  foreign  country,  as  far 
as  the  Secretary  knows,  is  without  example ;  and  general  ex- 
ample is  weighty  authority. 

He  is,  therefore,  of  opinion,  on  the  whole,  that  a  mint,  when- 
ever established,  should  be  established  at  home ;  that  the  supe- 
riority, the  merit,  and  means  of  the  undertaker,  will  suggest  him 
as  the  proper  person  to  be  engaged  in  the  establishment  and  con- 


OFFICIAL    PAPEES.  455 

duct  01  a  mint,  on  a  scale  which,  rehnquishing  nothing  in  the 
perfection  of  the  coin,  shall  be  duly  proportioned  to  our  purposes. 
And,  in  the  meanwhile,  he  is  of  opinion  the  present  proposals 
should  be  declined. 


IV. — Opinion  on  the  question  whether  the  Senate  has  the  right 
to  negative  the  grade  of  persons  appointed  by  the  Executive 
to  fill  Foreign  Missions. 

New  York,  April  24,  l^gO. 

The  constitution  having  declared  that  the  President  shall 
nominate  and,  by  and  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Sen- 
ate, shall  appoint  ambassadors,  other  public  ministers,  and  con- 
suls, the  President  desired  my  opinion  whether  the  Senate  hajs 
a  right  to  negative  the  grade  he  may  think  it  expedient  to  use 

in  a  foreign  mission  as  well  as  the  person  to  be  appointed. 
I  think  the  Senate  has  no  right  to  negative  the  grade. 
The  constitution  has  divided  the  powers  of  government  into 
three  branches.  Legislative,  Executive  and  Judiciary,  lodging 
each  with  a  distinct  magistracy.  The  Legislative  it  has  given 
completely  to  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives.  It  has 
declared  that  the  Executive  powers  shall  be  vested  in  the  Presi- 
dent, submitting  special  articles  of  it  to  a  negative  by  the  Sen- 
ate, and  it  has  vested  the  Judiciary  power  in  the  courts  of  jus- 
tice, with  certain  exceptions  also  in  favor  of  the  Senate. 

The  transaction  of  business  with  foreign  nations  is  Executive 
altogether.  It  belongs,  then,  to  the  head  of  that  department,  ex- 
cept as  to  such  portions  of  it  as  are  specially  submitted  to  the 
Senate.     Exceptions  are  to  be  construed  strictly. 

The  constitution  itself  indeed  has  taken  care  to  circumscribe 
this  one  within  very  strict  limits  ;  for  it  gives  the  nomination 
of  the  foreign  agents  to  the  President,  the  appointments  to  him 
and  the  Senate  jointly,  and  the  commissioning  to  the  President. 

This  analysis  calls  our  attention  the  strict  import  of  each 
term.     To  nominate  must  be  to  propose.     Appointment  seems 

VOL.  vii.  30 


4^66  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

that  act  of  the  will  which  constitutes  or  makes  the  agent,  and 
the  comtnission  is  the  public  evidence  of  it.  But  there  are  still 
other  acts  previous  to  these  not  specially  enumerated  in  the  con- 
stitution, to  wit :  1st.  The  destination  of  a  mission  to  the  par- 
ticular country  where  the  public  service  calls  for  it,  and  second 
the  character  or  grade  to  be  employed  in  it.  The  natural  order 
of  all  these  is  first,  destination  ;  second,  grade  ;  third,  nomina- 
tion ;  fourth,  appointment ;  fifth,  commission.  If  appointment 
does  not  comprehend  the  neighboring  acts  of  nomination  or  com- 
mission, (and  the  constitution  says  it  shall  not,  by  giving  them 
exclusively  to  the  President,)  still  less  can  it  pretend  to  com- 
prehend those  previous  and  more  remote,  of  destination  and 
grade. 

The  constitution,  analysing  the  three  last,  shows  they  do  not 
comprehend  the  two  first.  The  fourth  is  the  only  one  it  sub- 
mits to  the  Senate,  shaping  it  into  a  right  to  say  that  "  A  or  B  is 
unfit  to  be  appointed."  Now,  this  cannot  comprehend  a  right  to 
say  that  "  A  or  B  is  indeed  fit  to  be  appointed,"  but  the  grade  fixed 
on  is  not  the  fit  one  to  employ,  or,  "  our  connections  with  the 
country  of  his  destination  are  not  such  as  to  call  for  any  mission." 

The  Senate  is  not  supposed  by  the  constitution  to  be  acquaint- 
ed with  the  concerns  of  the  Executive  department.  It  was  not 
intended  that  these  should  be  communicated  to  them,  nor  can 
they  therefore  be  qualified  to  judge  of  the  necessity  which  calls 
for  a  mission  to  any  particular  place,  or  of  the  particular  grade, 
more  or  less  marked,  which  special  and  secret  circumstances  may 
call  for.  All  this  is  left  to  the  President.  They  are  only  to  see 
that  no  unfit  person  be  employed. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  Senate  may  by  continual  nega- 
tives on  the  person,  do  what  amounts  to  a  negative  on  the  grade, 
and  so,  indirectly,  defeat  this  right  of  the  President.  But  this 
would  be  a  breach  of  trust ;  an  abuse  of  power  confided  to  the 
Senate,  of  which  that  body  cannot  be  supposed  capable.  So 
the  President  has  a  power  to  convoke  the  Legislature,  and  the 
Senate  might  defeat  that  power  by  refusing  to  come.  This 
equally  amounts  to  a  negative  on  the  power  of  convoking.    Yet 


OFFICIAL    PAPEES.  467 

nobody  will  say  they  possess  such  a  negative,  or  would  be  capa- 
ble  of  usurping  it  by  such  oblique  means.  If  the  constitution 
had  meant  to  give  the  Senate  a  negative  on  the  grade  or  desti- 
nation, as  well  as  the  person,  it  would  have  said  so  in  direct 
terms,  and  not  left  it  to  be  effected  by  a  sidewind.  It  could 
never  mean  to  give  them  the  use  of  one  power  through  the 
abuse  of  another. 


V. — Opinion  upon  the  validity  of  a  grant  made  by  the  State 
of  Georgia  to  certain  companies  of  individuals,  of  a  tract 
of  country  whereof  the  Indian  right  had  never  been  extin- 
guished, with  power  to  such  individuals  to  extinguish  the  In- 
dian right. 

May  3d,  1'790. 

The  State  of  Georgia,  having  granted  to  certain  individuals  a 
tract  of  country,  within  their  chartered  limits,  whereof  the  In- 
dian right  has  never  yet  been  acquired  ;  with  a  proviso  in  the 
grants,  which  implies  that  those  individuals  may  take  measures 
for  extinguishing  the  Indian  rights  under  the  authority  of  that 
Government,  it  becomes  a  question  how  far  this  grant  is  good  ? 

A  society,  taking  possession  of  a  vacant  country,  and  declar- 
ing they  mean  to  occupy  it,  does  thereby  appropriate  to  them- 
selves as  prime  occupants  what  was  before  common.  A  practice 
introduced  since  the  discovery  of  America,  authorizes  them  to  go 
further,  and  to  fix  the  limits  which  they  assume  to  themselves  ; 
and  it  seems,  for  the  common  good,  to  admit  this  right  to  a 
moderate  and  reasonable  extent. 

If  the  country,  instead  of  being  altogether  vacant,  is  thinly 
occupied  by  another  nation,  the  right  of  the  native  forms  an  ex- 
ception to  that  of  the  new  comers ;  that  is  to  say,  these  will 
only  have  a  right  against  all  other  nations  except  the  natives. 
Consequently,  they  have  the  exclusive  privilege  of  acquiring  the 
native  right  by  purchase  or  other  just  means.  This  is  called  the 
right  of  preemption,  and  is  become  a  principle  of  the  law  of  na- 


4:68  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

tions,  fundamental  with  respect  to  America.  There  are  but  two 
means  of  acquiring  the  native  title.  First,  war ;  for  even  war 
may,  sometimes,  give  a  just  title.     Second,  contracts  or  treaty. 

The  States  of  America  before  their  present  union  possessed 
completely,  each  within  its  own  limits,  the  exclusive  right  to  use 
these  two  means  of  acquiring  the  native  title,  and,  by  their  act 
of  union,  they  have  as  completely  ceded  both  to  the  general 
government.  Art.  2d,  Section  1st.  "  The  President  shall  have 
power,  by  and  with  the  advice  of  the  Senate,  to  make  treaties, 
provided  two  thirds  of  the  Senators  present  concur."  Art.  1st, 
Section  8th,  "  The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  declare  war, 
to  raise  and  support  armies."  Section  10th,  "No  State  shall 
enter  into  any  treaty,  alliance  or  confederation.  No  State  shall, 
without  the  consent  of  Congress,  keep  troops  or  ships  of  war  in 
time  of  peace,  enter  into  any  agreement  or  compact  with  anoth- 
er State  or  with  a  foreign  power,  or  engage  in  war,  unless  ac- 
tually invaded  or  in  such  imminent  danger  as  will  not  admit  of 
delay." 

These  paragraphs  of  the  constitution,  declaring  that  the  gene- 
ral government  shall  have,  and  that  the  particular  ones  shall  not 
have,  the  right  of  war  and  treaty,  are  so  explicit  that  no  com- 
mentary can  explain  them  further,  nor  can  any  explain  them 
away.  Consequently,  Georgia,  possessing  the  exclusive  right  to 
acquire  the  native  title,  but  having  relinquished  the  means  of 
doing  it  to  the  general  government,  can  only  have  put  her  gran- 
tee into  her  own  condition.  She  could  convey  to  them  the  ex- 
clusive right  to  acquire  ;  but  she  could  not  convey  what  she  had 
not  herself,  that  is,  the  means  of  acquiring. 

For  these  they  must  come  to  the  general  government,  in  whose 
hands  they  have  been  wisely  deposited  for  the  purposes  both  of 
peace  and  justice. 

What  is  to  be  done  ?  The  right  of  the  general  government 
is,  in  my  opinion,  to  be  maintained.  The  case  is  sound,  and  the 
means  of  doing  it  as  practicable  as  can  ever  occur.  But  respect 
and  friendship  should,  I  think,  mark  the  conduct  of  the  genera, 
towards  the  particular  government,  and  explanations  should  be 


OrnOIAL    PAPERS.  469 

asked  and  time  and  color  given  them  to  tread  back  their  steps 
before  coercion  is  held  up  to  their  view.  I  am  told  there  is  al- 
ready a  strong  party  in  Georgia  opposed  to  the  act  of  their 
government. 

I  should  think  it  better  then  that  the  first  measures,  while 
firm,  be  yet  so  temperate  as  to  secure  their  alliance  and  aid  to 
the  general  government. 

Might  not  the  eclat  of  a  proclamation  revolt  their  pride  and 
passion,  and  throw  them  hastily  into  the  opposite  scale  ?  It  wil. 
be  proper  indeed  to  require  from  the  government  of  Georgia,  in 
the  first  moment,  that  while  the  general  government  shall  be 
expecting  and  considering  her  explanations,  things  shall  remain 
in  statu  quo,  and  not  a  move  be  made  towards  carrying  wha; 
they  have  begun  into  execution. 

Perhaps  it  might  not  be  superfluous  to  send  some  person  to  ths 
Indians  interested,  to  explain  to  them  the  views  of  government, 
and  to  watch  with  their  aid  the  territory  in  question. 


VI. — Opinion  in  favor  of  the  resolutions  of  May  %\st,  1790, 
directing  that,  in  all  cases  whej'e  payment  had  not  been  ah 
ready  made,  the  debts  due  to  the  soldiers  of  Virginia  ana 
North  Carolina,  should  be  paid  to  the  original  claimants  or 
their  attorneys,  and  not  to  their  assignees. 

June  3d,  1790. 

The  accounts  of  the  soldiers  of  Virginia  and  North  Carolina, 
having  been  examined  by  the  proper  officer  of  government,  the 
balances  due  to  each  individual  ascertained,  and  a  list  of  these 
balances  made  out,  this  list  became  known  to  certain  persons 
before  the  soldiers  themselves  had  information  of  it,  and  those 
persons,  by  unfair  means,  as  is  said,  and  for  very  inadequate  con- 
siderations, obtained  assignments  from,  many  of  the  soldiers  of 
whatever  sum  should  be  due  to  them  from  the  public,  without 
specifying  the  amount. 

The  legislature,  to  defeat  this  fraud,  passed  resolutions  on  the 


470  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

21st  of  May,  1796,  directing  that  where  payment  had  not  been 
made  to  the  original  claimant  in  person  or  his  representatives,  it 
shall  be  made  to  him  or  them  personally,  or  to  their  attorney, 
producing  a  power  for  that  purpose,  attested  by  two  justices  of 
the  county  where  he  resides,  and  specifying  the  certain  sum  he 
is  to  receive. 

It  has  been  objected  to  these  resolutions  that  they  annul  trans- 
fers of  property  which  were  good  by  the  laws  under  which  they 
were  made  ;  that  they  take  from  the  assignees  their  lawful 
property ;  are  contrary  to  the  principles  of  the  constitution, 
which  condemn  retrospective  laws ;  and  are,  therefore,  not  worthy 
of  the  President's  approbation. 

I  agree  in  an  almost  unlimited  condemnation  of  retrospective 
laws.  The  few  instances  of  wrong  which  they  redress  are  so 
overweighed  by  the  insecurity  they  draw  over  all  property  and 
even  over  life  itself,  and  by  the  atrocious  violations  of  both  to 
which  they  lead  that  it  is  better  to  live  under  the  evil  than  the 
remedy. 

The  only  question  I  shall  make  is,  whether  these  resolutions 
annul  acts  which  were  valid  when  they  were  done  ? 

This  question  respects  the  laws  of  Virginia  and  North  Caro- 
lina only.  On  the  latter  I  am  not  qualified  to  decide,  and  there- 
fore beg  leave  to  confine  myself  to  the  former. 

By  the  common  law  of  England  (adopted  in  Virginia)  the 
conveyance  of  a  right  to  a  debt  or  other  thing  whereof  the  party 
is  not  in  possession,  is  not  only  void,  but  severely  punishable  un- 
der the  names  of  Maintenance  and  Champerty.  The  Law-mer- 
chants, however,  which  is  permitted  to  have  course  between 
merchants,  allows  the  assignment  of  a  bill  of  exchange  for 
the  convenience  of  commerce.  This,  therefore,  forms  one  ex- 
ception to  the  general  rule,  that  a  mere  right  or  thing  in  action  is 
not  assignable.  A  second  exception  has  been  formed  by  an 
English  statute  (copied  into  the  laws  of  Virginia)  permitting 
promissory  notes  to  be  assigned.  The  laws  of  Virginia  have 
gone  yet  further  than  the  statute,  and  have  allowed,  as  a  third 
exception,  that  a  bond  should  be  assigned,  which  cannot  be  done 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  471 

even  at  this  day  in  England.  So  that,  in  Virginia,  when  a  debt 
has  been  settled  between  the  parties  and  put  into  the  form  of  a 
bill  of  exchange,  promissory  note  or  bond,  the  law  admits  it  to 
be  transferred  by  assignment.  In  all  other  cases  the  assignment 
of  a  debt  is  void. 

The  debts  from  the  United  States  to  the  soldiers  of  Virginia, 
not  having  been  put  into  either  of  these  forms,  the  assignments 
of  them  were  void  in  law. 

A  creditor  may  give  an  order  on  his  debtor  in  favor  of  another, 
but  if  the  debtor  does  not  accept  it,  he  must  be  sued  in  the  credit- 
or's name  ;  which  shows  that  the  order  does  not  transfer  the 
property  of  the  debts.  The  creditor  may  appoint  another  to  be 
his  attorney  to  receive  and  recover  his  debt,  and  he  may  cove- 
nant that  when  received  the  attorney  may  apply  it  to  his  own 
use.  But  he  must  sue  as  attorney  to  the  original  proprietor,  and 
not  in  his  own  right. 

This  proves  that  a  power  of  attorney,  with  such  a  covenant, 
does  not  transfer  the  property  of  the  debt.  A  further  proof  in 
both  cases  is,  that  the  original  creditor  may  at  any  time  before 
payment  or  acceptance  revoke  either  his  order  or  his  power  of 
attorney. 

In  that  event  the  person  in  whose  favor  they  were  given  has 
recourse  to  a  court  of  equity.  When  there,  the  judge  examines 
whether  he  has  done  equity.  If  he  finds  his  transaction  has 
been  a  fair  one,  he  gives  him  aid.  If  he  finds  it  has  been  other- 
wise, not  permitting  his  court  to  be  made  a  handmaid  to  fraud, 
he  leaves  him  without  remedy  in  equity  as  he  was  in  law.  The 
assignments  in  the  present  case,  therefore,  if  unfairly  obtained, 
as  seems  to  be  admitted,  are  void  in  equity  as  they  are  in  law. 
And  they  derive  their  nullity  from  the  laws  under  which  they 
were  made,  not  from  the  new  resolutions  of  Congress.  These 
are  not  retrospective.  They  only  direct  their  treasurer  not  to 
give  validity  to  an  assignment  which  had  it  not  before,  by  pay- 
ments to  the  assignee  until  he  in  whom  the  legal  property  still 
is,  shall  order  it  in  such  a  form  as  to  show  he  is  apprized  of  the 
sum  he  is  to  part  with,  and  its  readiness  to  be  paid  into  his  oi 


472  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

any  other  hands,  and  that  he  chooses,  notwithstanding,  to  ac- 
quiesce under  the  fraud  which  has  been  practised  on  him.  In 
that  case  he  has  only  to  execute  before  two  justices  a  power  of 
attorney  to  the  same  person,  expressing  the  specific  sum  of  his 
demand,  and  it  is  to  be  complied  with.  Actual  payment,  in  this 
case,  is  an  important  act.  If  made  to  the  assignee,  it  would  put 
the  burthen  of  proof  and  process  on  the  original  owner.  If 
made  to  that  owner,  it  puts  it  on  the  assignee,  who  must  then 
come  forward  and  show  that  his  transaction  has  been  that  of  an 
honest  man. 

Government  seems  to  be  doing  in  this  what  every  individual, 
I  think,  would  feel  himself  bound  to  do  in  the  case  of  his  own 
debt.  For,  being  free  in  the  law,  to  pay  to  the  one  or  the  other, 
he  would  certainly  give  the  advantage  to  the  party  who  has  suf- 
fered wrong  rather  than  to  him  who  has  committed  it. 

It  is  not  honorable  to  take  a  mere  legal  advantage,  when  it 
happens  to  be  contrary  to  justice. 

But  it  is  honorable  to  embrace  a  salutary  principle  of  law 
when  a  relinquishment  of  it  is  solicited  only  to  support  a  fraud. 

I  think  the  resolutions,  therefore,  merit  approbation.  I  have 
before  professed  my  incompetence  to  say  what  are  the  laws  of 
North  Carolina  on  this  subject.  They,  like  Virginia,  adopted 
the  English  laws  in  the  gross.  These  laws  forbid  in  general  the 
buying  and  selling  of  debts,  and  their  policy  in  this  is  so  wise 
that  I  presume  they  had  not  changed  it  till  the  contrary  be 
shown. 


Vn. — Plan  for  establishing  uniformity  in  the  Coinage,Wdghts, 
and  Measures  of  the  United  States.  Communicated  to  the 
House  of  Representatives,  July  13,  1790. 

Kew  York,  July  4,  1'790. 
Sir  :— In  obedience  to  the  order  of  the  House  of  Representatives  of  January 
15th,  I  have  novr  the  honor  to  enclose  you  a  report  on  the  subject  of  measures, 
■weights,  and  coins.  The  length  of  time  which  intervened  between  the  date  of 
the  order  and  my  arrival  in  this  city,  prevented  my  receiving  it  till  the  15th 
of  April ;    and  an  illness  which  followed  soon  after  added,  unavoidably,  some 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  473 

weeks  to  the  delay ;  so  that  it  was  not  till  about  the  20th  May  that  I  was  ahle  tt» 
finish  the  report.  A  desire  to  lessen  the  number  of  its  imperfections  induced  me 
still  to  withhold  it  awhile,  till,  on  the  15th  of  June,  came  to  my  hands,  from 
Paris,  a  printed  copy  of  a  proposition  made  by  the  Bishop  of  Autun,  to  the  Na- 
tional Assembly  of  France,  on  the  subject  of  weights  and  measures;  and  three 
days  afterwards  I  received,  through  the  channel  of  the  public  papers,  the  speech 
of  Sir  John  Riggs  Miller,  of  April  IStli,  in  the  British  House  of  Commons,  on  the 
same  subject.  In  the  report  which  I  had  prepared,  and  was  then  about  to  give 
in,  I  had  proposed  the  latitude  of  38°,  as  that  which  should  fix  our  standard,  be- 
cause it  was  the  medium  latitude  of  the  United  States  ;  but  the  proposition  be- 
fore the  National  Assembly  of  France,  to  take  that  of  45°  as  being  a  middle 
term  between  the  equator  and  both  poles,  and  a  term  which  consequently  might 
unite  the  nations  of  both  hemispheres,  appeared  to  me  so  well  chosen,  and  so 
just,  that  I  did  not  hesitate  a  moment  to  prefer  it  to  that  of  38°.  It  became 
necessary,  of  course,  to  conform  all  my  calculations  to  that  standard — an  opera- 
tion which  has  been  retarded  by  my  other  occupations. 

These  circumstances  will,  I  hope,  ajjologize  for  the  delay  which  has  attended 
the  execution  of  the  order  of  the  House ;  and,  perhaps,  a  disposition  on  their 
part  to  have  due  regard  for  the  proceedings  of  other  nations,  engaged  on  the 
same  subject,  may  induce  them  still  to  defer  deciding  ultimately  on  it  till  their 
next  session.  Should  this  be  the  case,  and  should  any  new  matter  occur  in  the 
meantime,  I  shall  think  it  my  duty  to  communicate  it  to  tlie  House,  as  supple- 
mental to  the  present  report. 

I  have  the  honor  to  be,  with  sentiments  of  the  most  profound  respect, 

Sir,  your  most  obedient  and  most  humble  servant. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred,  by  the  House  of 
Representatives,  to  prepare  and  report  a  proper  plan  or  plans 
for  establishing  uniformity  in  the  currency,  weights,  and 
measures  of  the  United  States,  in  obedience  thereto,  makes 
the  following  report : — 

To  obtain  uniformity  in  measures,  weights,  and  coins,  it  is 
necessary  to  find  some  measure  of  invariable  length,  with  which, 
as  a  standard,  they  may  be  compared. 

There  exists  not  in  nature,  as  far  as  has  been  hitherto  ob- 
served, a  single  subject  or  species  of  subject,  accessible  to  man, 
which  presents  one  constant  and  uniform  dimension. 

The  globe  of  the  earth  itself,  indeed,  might  be  considered  as 
invariable  in  all  its  dimensions,  and  that  its  circumference  would 
furnish  an  invariable  measure ;  but  no  one  of  its  circles,  great  or 
small,  is  accessible  to  admeasurement  through  all  its  parts,  and 
the  various  trials  to  measure  definite  portions  of  them,  have  been 


474  JEFFERSON'S   "WORKS. 

of  such  various  result  as  to  show  there  is  no  dependence  on  that 
operation  for  certainty. 

Matter,  then,  by  its  mere  extension,  furnishing  nothing  in- 
variable, its  motion  is  the  only  remaining  resource. 

The  motion  of  the  earth  round  its  axis,  though  not  abso- 
lutely uniform  and  invariable,  may  be  considered  as  such  for 
every  human  purpose.  It  is  measured  obviously,  but  unequally, 
by  the  departure  of  a  given  meridian  from  the  sun,  and  its  re- 
turn to  it,  constituting  a  solar  day.  Throwing  together  the  in- 
equalities of  solar  days,  a  mean  interval,  or  day,  has  been  found, 
and  divided,  by  very  general  consent,  into  86,400  equal  parts. 

A  pendulum,  vibrating  freely,  in  small  and  equal  arcs,  may  be 
so  adjusted  in  its  length,  as,  by  its  vibrations,  to  make  this  di- 
vision of  the  earth's  motion  into  86,400  equal  parts,  called  sec- 
onds of  mean  time. 

Such  a  pendulum,  then,  becomes  itself  a  measure  of  deter- 
minate length,  to  which  all  others  may  be  referred  to  as  to  a 
standard. 

But  even  a  pendulum  is  not  without  its  uncertainties. 

1.  The  difficulty  of  ascertaining,  in  practice,  its  centre  of 
oscillation,  as  depending  on  the  form  of  the  bob,  and  its  distance 
from  the  point  of  suspension ;  the  effect  of  the  weight  of_the 
suspending  wire  towards  displacing  the  centre  of  oscillation  ; 
that  centre  being  seated  within  the  body  of  the  bob,  and  there- 
fore inaccessible  to  the  measure,  are  sources  of  considerable  un- 
certainty. 

3.  Both  theory  and  experience  prove  that,  to  preserve  its  iso- 
chronism,  it  must  be  shorter  towards  the  equator,  and  longer 
towards  the  poles. 

3.  The  height  of  the  situation  above  the  common  level,  as 
being  an  increment  'to  the  radius  of  the  earth,  diminishes  the 
length  of  the  pendulum. 

4.  The  pendulum  being  made  of  metal,  as  is  best,  it  varies 
its  length  with  the  variations  in  the  temperature  of  the  atmos- 
phere. 

5.  To  continue  small  and  equal  vibrations,  through  a  sufficient 


OTFIOIAL    PAPEKS.  475 

length  of  time,  and  to  count  these  vibrations,  machinery  and  a 
power  are  necessary,  which  may  exert  a  small  but  constant  ef- 
fort to  renew  the  waste  of  motion  ;  and  the  difficulty  is  so  to  apply 
these,  as  that  they  shall  neither  retard  or  accelerate  the  vibrations. 
1.  In  order  to  avoid  the  uncertainties  which  respect  the  centre 
of  oscillation,  it  has  been  proposed  by  Mr.  Leslie,  an  ingenious 
artist  of  Philadelphia,  to  substitute,  for  the  pendulum,  a  uniform 
cylindrical  rod,  without  a  bob. 

Could  the  diameter  of  such  a  rod  be  infinitely  small,  the  cen- 
tre of  oscillation  would  be  exactly  at  two-thirds  of  the  whole 
length,  measured  from  the  point  of  suspension.  Giving  it  a 
diameter  which  shall  render  it  sufficiently  inflexible,  the  centre 
will  be  displaced,  indeed ;  but,  in  a  second  rod  not  the  (1)  six 
hundred  thousandth  part  of  its  length,  and  not  the  hundredth 
part  as  much  as  in  a  second  pendulum  with  a  spherical  bob  of 
proper  diameter.  This  displacement  is  so  infinitely  minute, 
then,  that  we  may  consider  the  centre  of  oscillation,  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes,  as  residing  at  two-thirds  of  the  length  from  the 
centre  of  suspension.  The  distance  between  these  two  centres 
might  be  easily  and  accurately  ascertained  in  practice.  But  the 
whole  rod  is  better  for  a  standard  than  any  portion  of  it,  because 
sensibly  defined  at  both  its  extremities. 

2.  The  uncertainty  arising  from  the  difierence  of  length  re- 
quisite for  the  second  pendulum,  or  the  second  rod,  in  different 
latitudes,  may  be  avoided  by  fixing  on  some  one  latitude,  to 
which  our  standard  shall  refer.  That  of  38°,  as  being  the  mid- 
dle latitude  of  the  United  States,  might  seem  the  most  con- 
venient, were  we  to  consider  ourselves  alone  ;  but  connected 
with  other  nations  by  commerce  and  science,  it  is  better  to  fix 
on  that  parallel  which  bids  fairest  to  be  adopted  by  them  also. 
The  45th,  as  being  the  middle  term  between  the  equator  and  pole, 
has  been  heretofore  proposed  in  Europe,  and  the  proposition  has 
been  lately  renewed  there  under  circumstances  which  may  very 
possibly  give  it  some  effect.  This  parallel  is  distinguished  with  us 
also  as  forming  our  principal  northern  boundary.  Let  the  com- 
pletion of  the  45th  degree,  then,  give  the  standard  for  our  union, 


476  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

with  the  hope  that  it  may  become  a  h'ne  of  uniou  with  the  rest 
of  the  world. 

The  difference  between  the  second  rod  for  45"  of  latitude, 
and  that  for  31°,  our  other  extreme,  is  to  be  examined. 

The  second  pendulum  for  45°  of  latitude,  according  to  Sir 
Isaac  Newton's  computation,  must  be  of  (2)  39.14912  inches 
English  measure  ;  and  a  rod,  to  vibrate  in  the  same  time,  must 
be  of  the  same  length  between  the  centres  of  suspension  and 
oscillation  ;  and,  consequently,  its  whole  length  58.7  (or,  more 
exactly,  58.72368)  inches.  This  is  longer  than  the  rod  which 
shall  vibrate  seconds  in  the  31°  of  latitude,  by  about  ^-i^  part  of 
its  whole  length  ;  a  difference  so  minute,  that  it  might  be  neg- 
lected, as  insensible,  for  the  common  purposes  of  life,  but,  in 
cases  requiring  perfect  exactness,  the  second  rod,  found  by  trial 
of  its  vibrations  in  any  part  of  the  United  States,  may  be  cor- 
rected by  computation  for  the  (3)  latitude  of  the  place,  and  so 
brought  exactly  to  the  standard  of  45°. 

3.  By  making  the  experiment  in  the  level  of  the  ocean,  the 
difference  will  be  avoided,  which  a  higher  position  might  occasion. 

4.  The  expansion  and  contraction  of  the  rod  with  the  change 
of  temperature,  is  the  fourth  source  of  uncertainty  before  men- 
tioned. According  to  the  high  authority  so  often  quoted,  an 
iron  rod,  of  given  length,  may  vary,  between  summer  and  winter, 
in  temperate  latitudes,  and  in  the  common  exposure  of  house 
clocks,  from  j^\j  to  ^jVj  of  its  whole  length,  which,  in  a  rod  of 
58.7  inches,  will  be  from  about  two  to  three  hundredths  of  an 
inch.  This  may  be  avoided  by  adjusting  and  preserving  the 
standard  in  a  cellar,  or  other  place,  the  temperature  of  which 
never  varies.  Iron  is  named  for  this  purpose,  because  the  least 
expansible  of  the  metals. 

5.  The  practical  difficulty  resulting  from  the  effect  of  the  ma- 
chinery and  moving  power  is  very  inconsiderable  in  the  present 
state  of  the  arts  ;  and,  in  their  progress  towards  perfection,  will 
become  less  and  less.  To  estimate  and  obviate  this,  will  be  the 
artist's  province.  It  is  as  nothing  when  compared  with  the 
sources  of  inaccuracy  hitherto  attending  measures. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  477 

Bei'trie  quitting  ihe  subject  of  the  inconveniences,  some  of 
wdich  attend  the  pendulum  alone,  others  both  the  pendulum  and 
rod,  it  mi'st  be  added  that  the  rod  would  have  an  accidental  but 
very  precious  advantage  ever  the  pendulum  in  this  country,  in 
the  event  of  our  fixing  the  foot  at  the  nearest  aliquot  part  of 
either  ;  for  the  diiference  beiween  the  common  foot,  and  those  so 
to  be  deduced,  would  be  throe  times  greater  in  the  case  of  the 
pendulum  than  in  that  of  the  rod. 

Let  the  standard  of  measure,  then,  be  a  uniform  cyhndrical  rod 
of  iron,  of  such  length  as,  in  latitude  45°,  in  the  level  of  the 
ocean,  and  in  a  cellar,  or  other  place,  the  temperature  of  which 
does  not  vary  through  the  year,  ahall  perform  its  vibrations  in 
small  and  equal  arcs,  in  one  second  of  mean  time. 

A  standard  of  invariable  length  being  thus  obtained,  we  may 
proceed  to  identify,  by  that,  the  m-easures,  weights  and  coins  of 
the  United  States  ;  but  here  a  doubt  presents  itself  as  to  the  ex- 
tent of  the  reformation  meditated  by  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives. The  experiment  made  by  Congress  in  the  year  one  thou- 
sand seven  hundred  and  eighty-six,  by  declaring  that  there  should 
be  one  money  of  account  and  payment  through  the  United 
States,  and  that  its  parts  and  multiples  should  be  in  a  decimal 
ratio,*  has  obtained  such  general  approbation,  both  at  home  and 
abroad,  that  nothing  seems  wanting  but  the  actual  coinage,  to 
banish  the  discordant  pounds,  shillings,  pence,  and  farthings  of 
the  different  States,  and  to  establish  in  their  stead  the  new  de- 
nominations. Is  it  in  contemplation  with  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives to  extend  a  like  improvement  to  our  measures  and 
weights,  and  to  arrange  them  also  in  a  decimal  ratio  ?  The  fa- 
cility which  this  would  introduce  into  the  vulgar  arithmetic 
would,  unquestionably,  be  soon  and  sensibly  felt  by  the  whole 
mass  of  the  people,  who  would  thereby  be  enabled  to  compute 
for  themselves  whatever  they  should  have  occasion  to  buy,  to 
sell,  or  to  measure,  which  the  present  complicated-  and  difficult 
ratios  place  beyond  their  computation  for  the  most  part.  Or,  is 
it  the  opinion  of  the  Representatives  that  the  difficulty  of  chang- 
ing the  established  habits  of  a  whole  nation  opposes  an  insupera- 
*  See  Vol  I.  p.  162. 


4:78  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

ble  bar  to  this  improvement  ?  Under  this  uncertainty,  the  SeC' 
retary  of  State  thinks  it  his  duty  to  submit  alternative  plans,  that 
the  House  may,  at  their  will,  adopt  either  the  one  or  the  other, 
exclusively,  or  the  one  for  the  present  and  the  other  for  a  future 
time,  when  the  public  mind  may  be  supposed  to  have  becomp 
familiarized  to  it. 

I.  And  first,  on  the  supposition  that  the  present  measures  and 
weights  are  to  be  retained  but  to  be  rendered  uniform  and  inva» 
riable,  by  bringing  them  to  the  same  invariable  standard. 

The  first  settlers  of  these  States,  having  come  chiefly  from 
England,  brought  with  them  the  measures  and  weights  of  that 
country.  These  alone  are  generally  established  among  us,  either 
by  law  or  usage  ;  and  these,  therefore,  are  alone  to  be  retained 
and  fixed.  We  must  resort  to  that  country  for  information  of 
what  they  are,  or  ought  to  be. 

This  rests,  principally,  on  the  evidence  of  certain  standard 
measures  and  weights,  which  have  been  preserved,  of  long  time, 
in  different  deposits.  But  differences  among  these  having  been 
known  to  exist,  the  House  of  Commons,  in  the  years  1757  and 
1758,  appointed  committees  to  inquire  into  the  original  standards 
of  their  weights  and  measures.  These  committees,  assisted  by 
able,  mathematicians  and  artists',  examined  and  compared  with 
each  other  the  several  standard  measures  and  weights,  and  made 
reports  on  them  in  the  years  1758  and  1759.  The  circum- 
stances under  which  these  reports  were  made  Entitle  them  to  be 
considered,  as  far  as  they  go,  as  the  best  written  testimony  exist- 
ing of  the  standard  measures  and  weights  of  England  ;  and  as 
such,  they  will  be  relied  on  in  the  progress  of  this  report. 

MEASURES    or    LENGTH. 

The  measures  of  length  iu  use  among  us  are  : 
The  league  of  3  miles.  The  fathom  of  2  yards, 

The  mile  of  8  furlongs,  The  ell  of  a  yard  and  quarter, 

The  furlong  of  40  poles  or     The  yard  of  3  feet, 

perches.  The  foot  of  12  inches,  and 

The  pole  or  perch  of  5^  yards,     The  inch  of  10  lines. 


OFFICIAI-    PAPERS.  479 

On  this  branch  of  their  subject,  the  committee  of  1757-1758, 
says  that  the  standard  measures  of  length  at  the  receipt  of  the 
exchequer,  are  a  yard,  supposed  to  be  of  the  time  of  Henry  VII., 
and  a  yard  and  ell  supposed  to  have  been  made  about  the  year 
1601 ;  that  they  are  brass  rods,  very  coarsely  made,  their  divis- 
ions not  exact,  and  the  rods  bent ;  and  that  in  the  year  1742, 
some  members  of  the  Royal  Society  had  been  at  great  pains  in 
taking  an  exact  measure  of  these  standards,  by  very  curious  in- 
struments, prepared  by  the  ingenious  Mr.  Graham  ;  that  the 
Royal  Society  had  had  a  brass  rod  made  pursuant  to  their  experi- 
ments, which  was  made  so  accurately,  and  by  persons  so  skilful 
and  exact,  that  it  was  thought  not  easy  to  obtain  a  more  exact 
one ;  and  the  committee,  in  fact,  found  it  to  agree  with  the  stand- 
ards at  the  exchequer,  as  near  as  it  was  possible.  They  furnish 
no  means,  to  persons  at  a  distance,  of  knowing  what  this  stand- 
ard is.  This,  however,  is  supplied  by  the  evidence  of  the  second 
pendulum,  which,  according  to  the  authority  before  quoted,  is, 
at  London,  39.1682  English  inches,  and,  consequently,  the  second 
rod  there  is  of  58.7523  of  the  same  inches.  When  we  shall 
have  found,  then,  by  actual  ytrial,  the  second  rod  for  45°  by  add- 
ing the  difference  of  their  computed  length,  to  wit :  tI 0  Jo-  of  an 
inch,  or  rather  t!o  of  a  line  (which  in  practice  will  endanger  less 
error  than  an  attempt  at  so  minute  a  fraction  as  the  ten  thou- 
sandth parts  of  an  inch)  we  shall  have  the  second  rod  of  Lon- 
don, or  a  true  measure  of  58J  English  inches.  Or,  to  shorten 
the  operation,  without  varying  the  result. 

Let  the  standard  rod  of  45°  be  divided  into  587i  equal  parts, 
and  let  each  of  these  parts  be  declared  a  line. 

10  lines  an  inch,  5^  yards  a  perch  or  pole, 

12  inches  a  foot,  40    poles  or  perches  a  furloug, 
3  feet  a  yard,  8    furlongs  a  mile, 

3  feet  9  inches  an  ell,  3    miles  a  league. 

6  feet  a  fathom, 

SUPERFICIAI,   MEASURES. 

Our  measures  of  surface  are,  the  acre  of  4  roods  and  the  rood 


480  JEFFERSON'S   ■WORKS. 

of  40  square  poles ;  so  established  by  a  statute  of  33  Edw.  1 
Let  them  remain  the  same. 

MEASURES    OF    CAPACITY. 

The  measures  of  capacity  in  use  among  us  are  of  the  follow- 
ing names  and  proportions : 

The  gill,  four  of  which  make  a  pint. 
Two  pints  make  a  quart. 
Two  quarts  a  pottle. 
Two  pottles  a  gallon. 
Two  gallong  a  peck,  dry  measure. 

Bight  gallons  make  a  measure  called  a  firkin,  in  liquid  sub- 
stances, and  a  bushel,  dry. 

Two  firkins,  or  bushels,  make  a  measure  called  a  rundlet  or 
kilderkin,  liquid,  and  a  strike,  dry. 

Two  kilderkins,  or  strikes,  make  a  measure  called  a  barrel, 
liquid,  and  a  coomb,  dry ;  this  last  term  being  ancient  and  little  used. 
Two  barrels,  or  coombs,  make  a  measure  called  a  hogshead, 
liquid,  or  a  quarter,  dry  ;  each  being  the  quarter  of  a  ton. 
A  hogshead  and  a  third  make  a  tierce,  or  third  of  a  ton. 
Two  hogsheads  make  a  pipe,  butt,  or  puncheon  ;  and 
Two  pipes  make  a  ton. 

But  no  one  of  these  measures  is  of  a  determinate  capacity. 
The  report  of  the  committee  of  1757—8,  shows  that  the  gallon  is 
of  very  various  content ;  and  that  being  the  unit,  all  the  others 
must  vary  with  it. 

The  gallon  and  bushel  contain — 

224  and  1792  cubic  inches,  according  to  the  standard  wine 

gallon  preserved  at  Guildhall. 
231  and  1848,  according  to  the  statute  of  5th  of  Anne. 
264.8  and  2118.4,  according  to  the  ancient  Ruraford  quart, 

of  1228,  examined  by  the  committee 
265.5  and  2124,  according  to  three  standard  bushels  pre- 
served in  the  Exchequer,  to  wit :  one  of  Henry  VII.,  with- 
out a  rim  ;  one  dated  1091,  supposed  for  1591,  or  IBOlj 
and  one  dated  1601. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  4yi 

366.25  and  2130,  according  to  the  ancient  Rumford  gallon 

of  1228,  examined  by  the  committee. 
268.75  and  2160,  according  to  the  Winchester  bushel,  as 

declared  by  statute  13,  14,  William  III.,  which  has  been 

the  model  for  some  of  the  grain  States. 
271,  less  2  spoonfuls,  and  2168,  less  16  spoonfuls,  according 

to  a  standard  gallon  of  Henry  VII.,  and  another  dated 

1601,  marked  E.  E.,  both  in  the  Exchequer. 

271  and  2168,  according  to  a  standard  gallon  in  the  Ex- 
chequer, dated  1601,  marked  E.,  and  called  the  corn 
gallon. 

272  and  2176,  according  to  the  three  standard  corii  gallons 
last  mentioned,  as  measured  in  1688,  by  an  artist  for  the 
Commissioners  of  the  Excise,  generally  used  in  the  sea- 
port towns,  and  by  mercantile  people,  and  thence  intro- 
duced into  some  of  the  grain  States. 

277:18  and  2217.44,  as  established  for  the  measure  of  coal 

by  the  statute  12  Anne. 
278  and  2224,  according  to  the  standard  bushel  of  Henry 

VII.,  with  a  copper  rim,  in  the  Exchequer. 
278.4  and  2227.2  according  to  two  standard  pints  of  1601 

and  1602,  in  the  Exchequer. 
280  and  2240,  according  to  the  standard  quart  of  1601,  m 

the  Exchequer. 
282  and  2256,  according  to  the  standard  gallon  for  beer  and 
ale  in  the  Treasury. 
There  are,  moreover,  varieties  on  these  varieties,  from  the  bar- 
rel to  the  ton,  inclusive  ;  for,  if  the  barrel  be  of  herrings,  it  must 
contain  28  gallons  by  the  statute  13  EUz.  c.  11.     If  of  wine,  it 
must  contain  31^  gallons  by  the  statute  2  Henry  VI.  c.  11,  and 
1  Rich.  III.  c.  15.     If  of  beer  or  ale,  it  must  contain  34  gallons  • 
by  the  statute  1  William  and  Mary,  c.  24,  and  the  higher  meas- 
ures in  proportion. 

In  those  of  the  United  States  which  have  not  adopted  the 
statutes  of  William  and  Mary,  and  of  Anne  before  cited,  nor  their 
substance,  the  wine  gallon  of  231  f-ubic  inches  rests  on  the  au- 

VOL.  VII.  31 


482  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

thority  of  very  long  usage,  before  the  5th  of  Anne,  the  origin 
and  foundation  of  which  are  unknown  ;  the  bushel  is  the  Win- 
chester bushel,  by  the  1 1  Henry  VII.  undefined  ;  and  the  barrel 
of  ale  32  gallons,  and  of  beer  36  gallons,  by  the  statute  23  Henry 
Vlll.  c.  4. 

The  Secretary  of  State  is  not  informed  whether  there  have 
been  any,  and  what,  alterations  of  these  measures  by  the  laws  of 
the  particular  States. 

It  is  proposed  to  retain  this  series  of  measures,  but  to  fix  the 
gallon  to  one  determinate  capacity,  as  the  unit  of  measure,  both 
wet  and  dry  ;  for  convenience  is  in  favor  of  abolishing  the  dis- 
tinction between  wet  and  dry  measures. 

The  wine  gallon,  whether  of  224  or  231  cubic  inches,  may  be 
altogether  disregarded,  as  concerning,  principally,  the  mercantile 
and  the  wealthy,  the  least  numerous  part  of  the  society,  and  the 
most  capable  of  reducing  one  measure  to  another  by  calculation. 
This  gallon  is  little  used  among  the  mass  of  farmers,  whose  chief 
habits  and  interests  are  in  the  size  of  the  corn  bushel. 

Of  the  standard  measures  before  stated,  two  are  principally  dis- 
tinguished in  authority  and  practice.  The  statute  bushel  of 
2150  cubic  inches,  which  gives  a  gallon  of  268.75  cubic  inches, 
and  the  standard  gallon  of  1601,  called  the  corn  gallon  of  271 
or  272  cubic  inches,  which  has  introduced  the  mercantile  bushel 
of  2276  inches.  The  former  of  these  is  most  used  in  some  of 
the  grain  States,  the  latter  in  others.  The  middle  term  of  270 
cubic  inches  may  be  taken  as  a  mutual  compromise  of  con- 
venience, and  as  offering  this  general  advantage :  that  the  bushel 
being  of  2160  cubic  inches,  is  exactly  a  cubic  foot  and  a  quarter, 
and  so  facilitates  the  conversion  of  wet  and  dry  measures  into 
solid  contents  and  tonnage,  and  simplifies  the  connection  of  meas- 
ures and  weights,  as  will  be  shown  hereafter.  It  may  be  added, 
in  favor  of  this,  as  a  medium  measure,  that  eight  of  the  standard, 
or  statute  measures  before  enumerated,  are  below  this  term,  and 
nine  above  it. 

The  measures  to  be  made  for  use,  being  four  sided,  with  rec- 
tangular  sides  and  bottom. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  483 

The  pint  will  be  3  inches  square,  and  3|  inches  deep  ; 

The  quart  3  inches  square,  and  7i  inches  deep  ; 

The  pottle  3  inches  square,  and  15  inches  deep,  or  4^,  5,  and 
6  inches. 

The  gallon  6  inches  square,  and  7^  inches  deep,  or  5,  6,  and 
9  inches ; 

The  peck  6,  9,  and  10  inches ; 

The  half  bushel  12  inches  square,  and  7^  inches  deep ;  and 

The  bushel  12  inches  square,  and  15  inches  deep,  or  9,  15, 
and  16  inches. 

Cylindrical  measures  have  the  advantage  of  superior  strength, 
but  square  ones  have  the  greater  advantage  of  enabling  every  one 
who  has  a  rule  in  his  pocket,  to  verify  their  contents  by  meas- 
uring them.  Moreover,  till  the  circle  can  be  squared,  the 
cylinder  cannot  be  cubed,  nor  its  contents  exactly  expressed  in 
figm-es. 

Let  the  measures  of  capacity,  then,  for  the  United  States  be- 

A  gallon  of  270  cubic  inches  ; 

The  gallon  to  contain  2  pottles  j 

The  pottle  2  quarts  ; 

The  quart  2  pints  ; 

The  pint  4  gills  ; 

Two  gallons  to  make  a  peck ; 

Eight  gallons  a  bushel  or  firkin ; 

Two  bushels,  or  firkin,  a  strike  or  kilderkin  ' 

Two  strikes,  or  kilderkins,  a  coomb  or  barr^- ; 

Two  coombs,  or  barrels,  a  quarter  or  hogshead 

A  hogshead  and  a  third  one  tierce  ; 

Two  hogsheads  a  pipe,  butt,  or  puncheon  ;  and 

Two  pipes  a  ton. 

And  let  all  measures  of  capacity  of  dry  subjects  be  stricken 
with  a  straight  strike. 

WEIGHTS. 

There  are  two  series  of  weights  in  use  among  us ;  the  one 
called  avoirdupois,  the  other  trov. 


484  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

In  the  Avoirdupois  series : 

The  pound  is  divided  into  16  ounces ; 
The  ounce  into  16  drachms ; 
The  drachm  into  4  quarters. 

In  the  Troy  series  : 

The  pound  is  divided  into  12  ounces  ; 

The  ounce  (according  to  the  subdivision  of  the  apothecaries) 
into  8  drachms  ; 

The  drachm  into  3  scruples ; 

The  scruple  into  20  grains. 

According  to  the  subdivision  for  gold  and  silver,  the  ounce  is 
divided  into  twenty  pennyweights,  and  the  pennyweight  into 
twenty-four  grains. 

So  that  the  pound  troy  contains  5760  grains,  of  which  7000 
are  requisite  to  make  the  pound  avoirdupois  ;  of  course  the  weight 
of  the  pound  troy  is  to  that  of  the  pound  avoirdupois  as  5760  to 
7000,  or  as  144  to  175. 

It  is  remarkable  that  this  is  exactly  the  proportion  of  the  an- 
cient liquid  gallon  of  Guildhall  of  224  cubic  inches,  to  the  corn 
gallon  of  272  ;  for  224  are  to  272  as  144  to  175.  (4.) 

It  is  further  remarkable  still,  that  this  is  also  the  exact  propor- 
tion between  the  specific  weight  of  any  measure  of  wheat,  and 
of  the  same  measure  of  water :  for  the  statute  bushel  is  of  64 
pounds  of  wheat.  Now  as  144  to  175,  so  are  64  pounds  to  77.7 
pounds ;  but  77.7  pounds  is  known  to  be  the  weight  of  (5.) 
2150.4  cubic  inches  of  pure  water,  which  is  exactly  the  content 
of  the  Winchester  bushel,  as  declared  by  the  statute  13,  14, 
"Will.  3.  That  statute  determined  the  bushel  to  be  a  cylinder 
of  18j  inches  diameter,  and  8  inches  depth.  Such  a  cylinder, 
as  nearly  as  it  can  be  cubed,  and  expressed  in  figures,  contains 
2150.425  cubic  inches ;  a  result  which  reflects  authority  on  the 
declaration  of  Parliament,  and  induces  a  favorable  opinion  of  the 
care  with  which  they  investigated  the  contents  of  the  ancient 
bushel,  and  also  a  belief  that  there  might  exist  evidence  of  it  at 
that  day,  unknown  to  the  committees  of  1758  and  1759. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  485 

We  find,  then,  in  a  continued  proportion  64  to  77.7  as  224  to 
272,  and  as  144  to  175,  that  is  to  say,  the  specific  weight  of  a 
measure  of  wheat,  to  that  of  the  same  measure  of  water,  as  the 
cubic  contents  of  the  wet  gallon,  to  those  of  the  dry ;  and  as  the 
weight  of  a  pound  troy  to  that  of  a  pound  avoirdupois. 

This  seems  to  have  been  so  combined  as  to  render  it  indifier- 
ent  whether  a  thing  were  dealt  out  by  weight  or  measure  ;  for 
the  dry  gallon  of  wheat,  and  the  liquid  one  of  wine,  were  of  the 
same  weight ;  and  the  avoirdupois  pound  of  wheat,  and  the  troy 
pound  of  wine,  were  of  the  same  measure.  Water  and  the  vinous 
liquors,  which  enter  most  into  commerce,  are  so  nearly  of  a 
weight,  that  the  difl'erence,  in  moderate  quantities,  would  be  neg- 
lected by  both  buyer  and  seller ;  some  of  the  wines  being  a 
httle  heavier,  and  some  a  little  lighter,  than  water. 

Another  remarkable  correspondence  is  that  between  weights 
and  measures.  For  1000  ounces  avoirdupois  of  pure  water  fill 
a  cubic  foot,  with  mathematical  exactness. 

What  circumstances  of  the  times,  or  purposes  of  barter  or  com- 
merce, called  for  this  combination  of  weights  and  measures,  with 
the  subjects  to  be  exchanged  or  purchased,  are  not  now  to  be 
ascertained.  But  a  triple  set  of  exact  proportionals  representing 
weights,  measures,  and  the  things  to  be  weighed  and  measured, 
and  a  relation  so  integral  between  weights  and  solid  measures, 
must  have  been  the  result  of  design  and  scientific  calculation, 
and  not  a  mere  coincidence  of  hazard.  It  proves  that  the  dry 
and  wet  measures,  the  heavy  and  light  weights,  must  have  been 
original  parts  of  the  system  they  compose — contrary  to  the  opin- 
ion of  the  committee  of  1757,  1758,  who  thought  that  the  avoir- 
dupois weight  was  not  an  ancient  weight  of  the  kingdom,  nor 
ever  even  a  legal  weight,  but  during  a  single  year  of  the  reign 
of  Henry  VIII.  :  and,  therefore,  concluded,  otherwise  than  will 
be  here  proposed,  to  suppress  it  altogether.  Their  opinion  was 
founded  chiefly  on  the  silence  of  the  laws  as  to  this  weight. 
But  the  harmony  here  developed  in  the  system  of  weights  and 
measures,  of  which  the  avoirdupois  makes  an  essential  member, 
corroborated  by  a  general  use,  from  very  high  antiquity,  of  that. 


486  JEFFEESON'S   WORKS. 

or  of  a  nearly  similar  weight  under  another  (6.)  name,  seem 
stronger  proofs  that  this  is  legal  weight,  than  the  mere  silence 
of  the  written  laws  is  of  the  contrary. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  in  such  general  use  with  us,  that,  on 
the  principle  of  popular  convenience,  its  higher  denominations, 
at  least,  must  be  preserved.  It  is  by  the  avoirdupois  pound  and 
ounce  that  our  citizens  have  been  used  to  buy  and  sell.  But  the 
smaller  subdivisions  of  drachms  and  quarters  are  not  in  use  with 
them.  On  the  other  hand,  they  have  been  used  to  weigh  their 
money  and  medicine  with  the  pennyweights  and  grains  troy 
weight,  and  are  not  in  the  habit  of  using  the  pounds  and  ounces 
of  that  series.  It  would  be  for  their  convenience,  then,  to  sup- 
press the  pound  and  ounce  troy,  and  the  drachm  and  quarter 
avoirdupois  ;  and  to  form  into  one  series  the  avoirdupois  pound 
and  oiince,  and  the  troy  pennyweight  and  grain.  The  avoir- 
dupois ounce  contains  18  pennyweights  5i  grains  troy  weight. 
Divide  it,  then,  into  18  pennyweights,  and  the  pennyweight,  as 
heretofore,  into  24  grains,  and  the  new  pennyweight  will  con- 
tain between  a  third  and  a  quarter  of  a  grain  more  than  the  pres- 
ent troy  pennyweight ;  or,  more  accurately,  it  will  be  to  that  as 
875  to  864 — a  difference  not  to  be  noticed,  either  in  money  or 
medicine,,  below  the  denomination  of  an  ounce. 

But  it  will  be  necessary  to  refer  these  weights  to  a  determinate 
mass  of  some  substance,  the  specific  gravity  of  which  is  invari- 
able. Rain  water  is  such  a  substance,  and  may  be  referred  to 
everywhere,  and  through  all  time.  It  has  been  found  by  accu- 
rate experiments  that  a  cubic  foot  of  rain  water  weighs  1000 
ounces  avoirdupois,  standard  weights  of  the  exchequer.  It  is  true 
that  among  these  standard  weights  the  committee  report  small 
variations  ;  but  this  experiment  must  decide  in  favor  of  those 
particular  weights,  between  which,  and  an  integral  mass  of  water, 
so  remarkable  a  coincidence  has  been  found.  To  render  this 
standard  more  exact,  the  water  should  be  weighed  always  in  the 
*ame  temperature  of  air ;  as  heat,  by  increasing  its  volume,  less- 
ens its  specific  gravity.  The  cellar  of  uniform  tnraperature  is 
best  for  this  also. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  487 

Let  it,  then,  be  established  that  an  ounce  is  of  the  weight  of 
a  cube  of  rain  water,  of  one-tenth  of  a  foot ;  or,  rather,  that  it  is 
the  thousandth  part  of  the  weight  of  a  cubic  foot  of  rain  water, 
weighed  in  the  standard  temperature ;  that  the  series  of  weights 
of  the  United  States  shall  consist  of  pounds,  ounces,  penny- 
weights, and  grains ;  whereof 

24  grains  shall  be  one  pennyweight ; 

18  pennyweights  one  ounce  ; 

16  ounces  one  pound. 

COINS. 

Congress,  in  1786,  established  the  money  unit  at  375.64  troy 
grains  of  pure  silver.  It  is  proposed  to  enlarge  this  by  about  the 
third  of  a  grain  in  weight,  or  a  mill  in  value  ;  that  is  to  say,  to 
establish  it  at  376  (or,  more  exactly,  375.989343)  instead  of 
375.64  grains ;  because  it  will  be  shown  that  this,  as  the  unit  of 
coin,  will  link  in  system  with  the  units  of  length,  surface,  ca- 
pacity, and  weight,  whenever  it  shall  be  thought  proper  to  ex- 
tend the  decimal  ratio  through  all  these  branches.  It  is  to  pre- 
serve the  possibility  of  doing  this,  that  this  very  minute  altera- 
tion is  proposed. 

We  have  this  proportion,  then,  875  to  864,  as  375.989343 
grains  troy  to  371.2626277  ;  the  expression  of  the  unit  in  the 
new  grains. 

Let  it  be  declared,  therefore,  that  the  money  unit,  or  dollar  of 
the  United  States,  shall  contain  371.262  American  grains  of 
pure  silver. 

If  nothing  more,  then,  is  proposed,  than  to  render  uniform  and 
stable  the  system  we  already  possess,  this  may  be  effected  on  the 
plan  herein  detailed ;  the  sum  of  which  is  :  1st.  That  the  present 
measures  of  length  be  retained,  and  fixed  by  an  invariable  stand- 
ard. 2d.  That  the  measures  of  surface  remain  as  they  are,  and 
be  invariable  also  as  the  measures  of  length  to  which  they  are  to 
refer.  3d.  That  the  unit  of  capacity,  now  so  equivocal,  be  set- 
tled at  a  medium  and  convenient  term,  and  defined  by  the  same 
invariable  measures  of  length.  4th.  That  the  more  known 
terms  in  the  two  kinds  of  weights  be  retained,  and  reduced  to 


488  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

one  series,  and  that  they  be  referred  to  a  definite  mass  of  some 
substance,  the  specific  gravity  of  which  never  changes.  And 
5th.  That  the  quantity  of  pure  silver  in  the  money  unit  be  ex- 
pressed in  parts  of  the  weights  so  defined. 

In  the  whole  of  this  no  change  is  proposed,  except  an  insensible 
one  in  the  troy  grain  and  pennyweight,  ^nd  the  very  minute  one 
in  the  money  unit. 

II.  But  if  it  be  thought  that,  either  now,  or  at  any  future  time, 
the  citizens  of  the  United  States  may  be  induced  to  undertake  a 
thorough  reformation  of  their  whole  system  of  measures,  weights 
and  coins,  reducing  every  branch  to  the  same  decimal  ratio  al- 
ready established  in  their  coins,  and  thus  bringing  the  calculation 
of  the  principal  aifairs  of  life  within  the  arithmetic  of  every  man 
who  can  multiply  and  divide  plain  numbers,  greater  changes 
will  be  necessary. 

The  unit  of  measure  is  still  that  which  must  give  law  through 
the  whole  system ;  and  from  whatever  unit  we  set  out,  the  coin- 
cidences between  the  old  and  new  ratios  will  be  rare.  All  that 
can  be  done,  will  be  to  choose  such  a  unit  as  will  produce  the  , 
most  of  these.  In  this  respect  the  second  rod  has  been  found, 
on  trial,  to  be  far  preferable  to  the  second  pendulum. 

MEASURES    OP    LENGTH. 

Let  the  second  rod,  then,  as  before  described,  be  the  standard 
of  measure  ;  and  let  it  be  divided  into  five  equal  parts,  each  of 
which  shall  be  called  a  foot ;  for,  perhaps,  it  may  be  better  gen- 
erally to  retain  the  name  of  the  nearest  present  measure,  where 
there  is  one  tolerably  near.  It  will  be  about  one  quarter  of  an 
inch  shorter  than  the  present  foot. 

Let  the  foot  be  divided  into     Let  10  feet  make  a  decad  ; 
10  inches  ;  10  decads  one  rood  ; 

The  inch  into  10  lines  ;  10  roods  a  furlong  ; 

The  line  into  10  points ;  10  furlongs  a  mile. 

SUPEKFICIAL    MEASURES. 

Superficial  measures  have  been  estimated,  and  so  may  con- 
tinue to  be,  in  squares  of  the  measures  of  length,  except  in  the 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  489 

case  of  lands,  which  have  been  estimated  by  squares,  called  roods 
and  acres.  Let  the  rood  be  equal  to  a  square,  every  side  of  which 
is  100  feet.  This  will  be  6.483  English  feet  less  than  the  Eng- 
lish (7.)  rood  every  way,  and  1311  square  feet  less  in  its  whole 
contents  ;  that  is  to  say,  about  one-eighth ;  in  which  proportion, 
also,  4  roods  will  be  less  than  the  present  acre. 

MEASURES    OF    CAPACITY. 

Let  the  unit  of  capacity  be  the  cubic  foot,  to  be  called  a 
bushel.  It  will  contain  1620.05506862  cubic  inches,  English  ; 
be  about  one-fourth  less  than  that  before  proposed  to  be  adopted 
as  a  medium ;  one-tenth  less  than  the  bushel  made  from  8  of  the 
Guildhall  gallons ;  and  one-fourteenth  less  than  the  bushel  made 
from  8  Irish  gallons  of  217.6  cubic  inches. 

Let  the  bushel  be  divided  into  10  pottles  ; 

Each  pottle  into  10  demi-pints  ; 

Each  demi-pint  into  10  metres,  which  will  be  of  a  cubic 
inch  each. 

Let  10  bushels  be  a  quarter,  and 

10  quarters  a  last,  or  double  ton. 
The  measures  for  use  being  four-sided,  and  the  sides  and  bot- 
toms rectangular,  the  bushel  will  be  a  foot  cube. 

The  pottle  5  inches  square  and  four  inches  deep  ; 

The  demi-pint  2  inches  square,  and  2J  inches  deep ; 

The  metre,  an  inch  cube.  , 

WEIGHTS. 

Let  the  weight  of  a  cubic  inch  of  rain  water,  or  the  thousandth 
part  of  a  cubic  foot,  be  called  an  ounce ;  and  let  the  ounce  be 
divided  into  10  double  scruples  : 

The  double  scruple  into  10  carats ; 

The  carat  into  10  minims  or  demi-grains ; 

The  minim  into  10  mites. 

Let  10  ounces  make  a  pound  ; 

10  pounds  a  stone  ; 

16  stones  a  kental ; 

10  kentals  a  hogshead. 


490  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS, 

COINS. 

Let  the  money  unit,  or  dollar,  contain  eleventh-twelfths  of  ah 
ounce  of  pure  silver.  This  will  be  376  troy  grains,  (or  more  ex- 
actly, 375.989343  troy  grains,)  which  will  be  about  a  third  of  a 
grain,  (or  more  exactly,  .349343  of  a  grain,  more  than  the  pres- 
ent unit.  This,  with  the  twelfth  of  alloy  already  established,  will 
make  the  dollar  or  unit,  of  the  weight  of  an  ounce,  or  of  a  cubic 
inch  of  rain  water,  exactly.  The  series  of  mills,  cents,  dimes, 
dollars,  and  eagles,  to  remain  as  already  established  (8.) 

The  second  rod,  or  the  second  pendulum,  expressed  in  the 
measures  of  other  countries,  will  give  the  proportion  between 
their  measures  and  those  of  the  United  States. 

Measures,  weights  and  coins,  thus  referred  to  standards  un- 
changeable in  their  nature,  (as  is  the  length  of  a  rod  vibrating 
seconds,  and  the  weight  of  a  definite  mass  of  rain  water,)  will 
themselves  be  unchangeable.  These  standards,  too,  are  such  as 
to  be  accessible  to  all  persons,  in  all  times  and  places.  The 
measures  and  weights  derived  from  them  fall  in  so  nearly  with 
some  of  those  now  in  use,  as  to  facilitate  their  introduction ;  and 
being  arranged  in  decimal  ratio,  they  are  within  the  calculation 
of  every  one  who  possesses  the  first  elements  of  arithmetic,  and  of 
easy  comparison,  both  for  foreigners  and  citizens,  with  the  meas- 
ures, weights,  and  coins  of  other  countries. 

A  gradual  introduction  would  lessen  the  inconveniences  which 
might  attend  too  sudden  a  substitution,  even  of  an  easier  for  a 
more  difficult  system.  After  a  given-term,  for  instance,  it  might 
begin  in  the  custom-houses,  where  the  merchants  would  become 
familiarized  to  it.  After  a  further  term,  it  might  be  introduced 
into  all  legal  proceedings,  and  merchants  and  traders  in  foreign 
commodities  might  be  required  to  use  it  in  their  dealings  with 
one  another.  After  a  still  further  term,  all  other  descriptions  of 
people  might  receive  it  into  common  use.  Too  long  a  postpone- 
ment, on  the  other  hand,  would  increase  the  difficulties  of  its  re- 
ception with  the  increase  of  our  population. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  491 

Appendix,  containing  illustrations  and  developments  of  some 
passages  of  the  preceding  report. 

(1.)  In  the  second  pendulum  with  a  spherical  bob,  call  the 
distance  between  the  centres  of  suspension  and  of  the  bob, 
2x19.575,  or  2d,  and  the  radius  of  the  bob=r;  then  2d  :  r  ::r: 
I  and  I  of  this  last  proportional  expresses  the  displacement  of  the 
centre  of  oscillation,  to  wit :  ^  =  ^.  Two  inches  have  been 
proposed  as  a  proper  diameter  for  such  a  bob.  In  that  case  r 
will  be  =  l.  inch,  and  ^=g-Vr  inches. 

In  the  cylindrical  second  rod,  call  the  length  of  the  rod, 
3x19.575.  or  3d,  and  its  radius=r  and  ^=5-^  will  express  the 
displacement  of  the  centre  of  oscillation.  It  is  thought  the  rod 
will  be  sufficiently  inflexible  if  it  be  1  of  an  inch  in  diameter- 
Then  r  will  be=.l  inch,  and  ":=-J— ^  inches,  which  is  but  the  < 

^  6(1        1  I  7  J  5  ' 

120th  part  of  the  displacement  in  the  case  of  the  pendulum  with 
a  spherical  bob,  and  but  the  689,710th  part  of  the  whole  length 
of  the  rod.  If  the  rod  be  even  of  half  an  inch  diameter,  the  dis- 
placement will  be  but  ,~  of  an  inch,  or  rr-r-r.  of  the  length  of 

•^  lo7y  ■'llOiioo  o 

the  rod. 

(2.)  Sir  Isaac  Newton  computes  the  pendulum  for  45°  to  be  36 
pouces  8.428  lignes.  Picard  made  the  English  foot  11  pouces 
2.6  lignes,  and  Dr.  Maskelyne  11  pouces  3.11  lignes.  D'Alembert 
states  it  at  11  pouces  3  lignes,  which  has  been  used  in  these  cal- 
culations as  a  middle  term,  and  gives  us  36  pouces  8.428  lignes 
=39.1491  inches.  This  length  for  the  pendulum  of  45°  had 
been  adopted  in  this  report  before  the  Bishop  of  Autun's  proposi- 
tion was  known  here.  He  relies  on  Mairan's  ratio  for  the  length 
of  the  pendulum  in  the  latitude  of  Paris,  to  wit :  504 :  257::72 
pouces  to  a  4th  proportional,  which  will  be  36.71428  pouces = 
39.1619  inches,  the  length  of  the  pendulum  for  latitude  48°  50'. 
The  ditference  between  this  and  the  pendulum  for  45°  is  .0113 
of  an  inch ;  so  that  the  pendulum  for  45°  would  be  estimated, 
according  to  Mairan,  at  39.1619 — .0113=39.1506  inches,  almost 
precisely  the  same  with  Newton's  computation  herein  adopted. 


492 


JEFFEKSON'S   WOEKS. 


(3.)  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  computations  for  the  different  degrees 
of  latitude,  from  30®  to  45°,  are  as  follows : 


30° 

Pieds. 

.     3     . 

Lignes. 

7.948 

42° 

Pieds. 

.     3     . 

Lignes. 

8.327 

35 

.     3     . 

8.099 

43 

.     3     . 

8.361 

40 

.     3     . 

8.261 

44 

.     3     . 

8.394 

41 

.     3     . 

8.294 

45 

.     3     . 

8.428 

(4.)  Or,  more  exactly,  144: 175::224: 272.2. 

(5.)  Or,  more  exactly,  62.5 :  1728::77.7 :  2150.39. 

(6.)  The  merchant's  weight. 

(7.)  The  Eng.  rood  contains  10,890  sq.  feet=104.355  feet  sq. 


(8.)   The  Measures, 
estimated  in  those 


The  point. 

J.' ecu 

.  .001 

The  line. 

.  .01 

The  inch, 

.  .1 

The  foot. 

.  1. 

The  decad. 

.  10. 

The  rood,     .  100. 

The  furlong,  1000. 
The  mile,    .  10000 


Weights,  and  Coins  of  the  Decimal  System, 
of  England,  now  used  in  the  United  States. 

1.    MEASURES    or    LENGTH. 

Equivalent  in  English  measure 

.  .011  inch. 
.  .117 

.  1.174,  ahout  I  more  than  the  Eng.  inch. 
).   11.744736       >  about  ^V  less  than  the 
$.  .978728  feet,  5  English  foot. 
.  9.787,  about  jV  less  than  the  10  feet  rod 

of  the  carpenters. 
.  97.872,  about  yV  less  than  the  side  of 

an  English  square  rood. 
.  978.728,  about  i  more  than  the  Eng.  fur. 
.     .  9787.28,  about  If  English  mile,  nearly 
the  Scotch  and  Irish  mile,  and  |  the 
German  mile. 


2.    SUPEBFICIAL.    MEASURE. 
Roods. 


The  hundredth, 

.  .01 

.  95.69  square  feet  English. 

The  tenth, 

.  .1 

.  957.9 

The  rood, 

.  1. 

.  9579.085 

The  double  acre, 

.  10. 

.  2.199,  or  say  2.3  acres  Enghsh. 

The  square  furlong. 

.  100 

.  22. 

OFFICIAL    PAPERS. 


493 


3.    MEASURE    OF    CAPACITY. 


The  metre, 
The  demi-pint, 

The  pottle, 

The  bushel, 

The  quarter, 
The  last, 


less  than  the  English 


Bushela.     Cub.  luches. 

.001  .  1.62 
.01     .  16.2,  about 
half-pint. 
.1       .  162.005,  about  }  more  than  the  Eng- 
lish pottle. 
1620.05506862  ) 

.937531868414884352  cub  feet.  5 
about  J  less  than  the  middle  sized  English  bushel. 
.  10.     .  9.375,  about  }  hss  that  the  Eng.  qr. 
.  100.  .  93.753,  about  4  more  than  the  Eng.  last. 


4.    WEIGHTS. 
Pounds.  Avoirdupois.  Troy. 

Mite,  .00001 041  grains,  about  i 

less  than  the  English  mite. 

Minim,  or    )      qqq. 4101,  about  i  less 

demi-grain,  j     '  than  half-grain  troy. 

Carat,  .001 4101,  about  jV  more 

than  the  carat  troy. 

Double         )  Q-, 41.017,  about  -f\ 

scruple,         5         ■  more  than  2  scruples  troy. 

,  C  9375318684148      >  C    410.170192431 
Ounce,  .         .1^  84352  oz.  \  I    .85452  oz. 

about  jV  less  than  the  ounce  avoirdupois. 
p       ,  ,(9.375  ). 712101  lb.,  about! 

^°™'^'  •  ^- 1  .585957417759  lb.  J  less  than  the  pound 

troy. 
„  ,„   C  93.753  oz.  )  7.121  about  i  less 

totone,  .       iU.  ^    5.85951b.  5     thai,   .he  English 

stone  of  8  lbs.  avoidupois. 

„     .  ,  -„^  5  937.531  oz.  )  71.21  about  /»  less 

Aental,  .     lUU.  ^    58.5957  ib.  ^      than  the  Enghsh 

kental  of  100  lbs.  avoirdupois. 

Hogshead,      •  1000.  ^  9375^^1^^  o^z.  ^  ,,3  ^^j 


494 


JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

5.    COINS. 


Dollars. 

The  mill, 

.     .001 

The  cent, 

.       .01 

The  dime, 

.1 

Dollar,  .     1. 


Troy  grains 

375.98934306  pure  silver. 
34.18084937  alloy. 


Eagle,  .  10.     410.17019243 


Postscript. 

January  10,  1791. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  observe  that  the  measures,  weights, 
and  coins,  proposed  in  the  preceding  report,  will  be  derived  al- 
together from  mechanical  operations,  viz. :  A  rod,  vibrating  sec- 
onds, divided  into  five  equal  parts,  one  of  these  subdivided,  and 
multiplied  decimally,  for  every  measure  of  length,  surface,  and 
capacity,  and  these  last  filled  with  water,  to  determine  the 
weights  and  coins.  The  arithmetical  estimates  in  the  report 
were  intended  only  to  give  an  idea  of  what  the  new  measures, 
weights,  and  coins,  would  be  nearly,  when  compared  with  the 
old.  The  length  of  the  standard  or  second  rod,  therefore,  was 
assumed  from  that  of  the  pendulum  ;  and  as  there  has  been  small 
differences  in  the  estimates  of  the  pendulum  by  diSerent  persons, 
that  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  was  taken,  the  highest  authority  the 
world  has  yet  known.  But,  if  even  he  has  erred,  the  measures, 
weights,  and  coins  proposed,  will  not  be  an  atom  the  more  or  less. 
In  cubing  the  new  foot,  which  was  estimated  at  .978728  of  an 
English  foot,  or  11.744736  English  inches,  an  arithmetical  error 
of  an  unit  happened  in  the  fourth  column  of  decimals,  and  was 
repeated  in  another  line  in  the  sixth  column,  so  as  to  make  the 
result  one  ten  thousandth  and  one  millionth  of  a  foot  too  much. 
The  thousandth  part  of  this  error  (about  one  ten  millionth  of  a 
oot)  consequently  fell  on  the  metre  of  measure,  the  ounce 
weight,  and  the  unit  of  money.  In  the  last  it  made  a  difference 
of  about  the  twenty-fifth  part  of  a  grain  Troy,  in  weight,  or  the 
ninety-third  of  a  cent  in  value.  As  it  happened,  this  error  was 
on  the  favorable  side,  so  that  the  detection  of  it  approximates  our 
estimate  of  the  new  unit  exactly  that  much  nearer  to  the  old, 
and  redunes  the  difference  between  them  to  34,  instead  of  38 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  495 

hundredths  of  a  grain  Troy ;  that  is  to  say,  the  money  unit  in- 
stead of  375.64  Troy  grains  of  pure  silver,  as  estabHshed  hereto- 
fore, will  now  be  375.98934306  grains,  as  far  as  our  knowledge 
of  the  length  of  the  second  pendulum  enables  us  to  judge ;  and 
the  current  of  authorities  since  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  time,  gives 
reason  to  believe  that  his  estimate  is  more  probably  above  than 
below  the  truth,  consequently  future  corrections  of  it  will  bring 
the  estimate  of  the  new  imit  still  nearer  to  the  old. 

The  numbers  in  which  the  arithmetical  error  before  mentioned 
showed  itself  in  the  table,  at  the  end  of  the  report,  have  been 
rectified,  and  the  table  re-printed. 

The  head  of  superficial  measures  in  the  last  part  of  the  report, 
it  thought  to  be  not  sufficiently  developed.  It  is  proposed  that 
the  rood  of  land,  being  100  feet  square,  (and  nearly  a  quarter  of 
the  present  acre,)  shall  be  the  unit  of  land  measure.  This  will 
naturally  be  divided  into  tenths  and  hundredths,  the  latter  of 
which  will  be  a  square  decad.  Its  multiples  will  also,  of  course, 
be  tens,  which  may  be  called  double  acres,  and  hundreds,  which 
will  be  equal  to  a  square  furlong  each.  The  surveyor's  chain 
should  be  composed  of  100  links  of  one  foot  each. 


YIII. — Opinion  upon  the  question  whether  the  President  should 
veto  the  Bill,  declaring  that  the  seat  of  government  shall  be 
transferred  to  the  Potomac,  in  the  year  1790. 

July  15,  1790. 

A  bill  having  passed  both  houses  of  Congress,  and  being  now 
before  the  President,  declaring  that  the  seat  of  the  federal  gov- 
ernment shall  be  transferred  to  the  Potomac  in  the  year  1790, 
that  the  session  of  Congress  next  ensuing  the  present  shall  be 
held  in  Philadelphia,  to  which  place  the  offices  shall  be  trans- 
ferred before  the  1st  of  December  next,  a  writer  in  a  public 
paper  of  July  13,  has  urged  on  the  consideration  of  the  Presi- 
dent, that  the  constitution  has  given  to  the  two  houses  of  Con- 
gress the  exclusive  right  to  adjourn  themselves ;  that  the  will  of 


496  JEFFERSON'S   "WOEKS. 

the  President  mixed  with  theirs  in  a  decision  of  this  kind,  •would 
be  an  inoperative  ingredient,  repugnant  to  the  constitution,  and 
that  he  ought  not  to  permit  them  to  part,  in  a  single  instance, 
with  their  constitutional  rights ;  consequently,  that  he  ought  to 
negative  the  bill. 

That  is  now  to  be  considered. 

Every  man,  and  every  body  of  men  on  earth,  possesses  the 
right  of  self-government.  They  receive  it  with  their  being  from 
the  hand  of  nature.  Individuals  exercise  it  by  their  single  will ; 
collections  of  men  by  that  of  their  majority ;  for  the  law  of  the 
majority  is  the  natural  law  of  every  society  of  men.  When  a 
certain  description  of  men  are  to  transact  together  a  particular 
business,  the  times  and  places  of  their  meeting  and  separating, 
depend  on  their  own  Avill ;  they  make  a  part  of  the  natural  right 
of  self-government.  This,  like  all  other  natural  rights,  may  be 
abridged  or  modified  in  its  exercise  by  their  own  consent,  or  by 
the  law  of  those  who  depute  them,  if  they  meet  in  the  right  of 
others  ;  but  as  far  as  it  is  not  abridged  or  modified,  they  retain  it 
as  a  natural  right,  and  may  exercise  them  in  what  form  they 
please,  either  exclusively  by  themselves,  or  in  association  with 
others,  or  by  others  altogether,  as  they  shall  agree. 

Each  house  of  Congress  possesses  this  natural  right  of  govern- 
ing itself,  and,  consequently,  of  fixing  its  own  times  and  places 
of  meeting,  so  far  as  it  has  not  been  abridged  by  the  law  of 
those  who  employ  them,  that  is  to  say,  by  the  Constitution. 
This  act  manifestly  considers  them  as  possessing  this  right  of 
course,  and  therefore  has  nowhere  given  it  to  them.  In  the 
several  diff'erent  passages  where  it  touches  this  right,  it  treats  it 
as  an  existing  thing,  not  as  one  called  into  existence  by  them. 
To  evince  this,  every  passage  of  the  constitution  shall  be  quoted, 
where  the  right  of  adjournment  is  touched  ;  and  it  will  be  seen 
that  no  one  of  them  pretends  to  give  that  right ;  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, every  one  is  evidently  introduced  either  to  enlarge  the 
right  where  it  would  be  too  narrow,  to  restrain  it  where,  in  its 
natural  and  full  exercise,  it  might  be  too  large,  and  lead  to  incon- 
venience, to  defend  it  from  the  latitude  of  its  own  phrases,  where 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS,  497 

these  were  not  meant  to  comprehend  it,  or  to  provide  for  its  ex- 
ercise by  others,  when  they  cannot  exercise  it  themselves. 

"  A  majority  of  each  house  shall  constitute  a  quorum  to  do 
business  ;  but  a  smaller  number  may  adjourn  from  day  to  day, 
and  may  be  authorized  to  compel  the  attendance  of  absent  mem- 
oers."  Art.  1,  Sec.  5.  A  majority  of  every  collection  of  men 
being  naturally  necessary  to  constitute  its  will,  and  it  being  fre- 
quently to  happen  that  a  majority  is  not  assembled,  it  was  nec- 
essary to  enlarge  the  natural  right  by  giving  to  "  a  smaller  num- 
ber than  a  majority"  a  right  to  compel  the  attendance  of  the  ab- 
sent members,  and,  in  the  meantime,  to  adjourn  from  day  to  day. 
This  clause,  then,  does  not  pretend  to  give  to  a  majority  a  right 
which  it  knew  that  majority  would  have  of  themselves,  but  to  a 
number  less  than  a  majority,  a  right  to  which  it  knew  that 
lesser  number  could  not  have  of  themselves. 

"  Neither  house,  during  the  session  of  Congress,  shall,  without 
the  consent  of  the  other,  adjourn  for  more  than  three  days,  nor 
to  any  other  place  than  that  in  which  the  two  houses  shall  be 
sitting."  Ibid.  Each  house  exercising  separately  its  natural 
right  to  nteet  when  and  where  it  should  think  best,  it  might 
happen  that  the  two  houses  would  separate  either  in  time  or 
place,  which  would  be  inconvenient.  It  was  necessary,  there- 
fore, to  keep  them  together  by  restraining  their  natural  right 
of  deciding  on  separate  times  and  places,  and  by  requiring  a  con- 
currence of  will. 

But,  as  it  might  happen  that  obstinacy,  or  a  difference  of 
object,  might  prevent  this  concurrence,  it  goes  on  to  take  from 
them,  in  that  instance,  the  right  of  adjournment  altogether,  and 
to  transfer  it  to  another,  by  declaring.  Art.  2,  Sec.  3,  that  "  in 
case  of  disagreement  between  the  two  houses,  with  respect  to 
the  time  of  adjournment,  the  President  may  adjourn  them  to 
such  time  as  he  shall  think  proper." 

These  clauses,  then,  do  not  import  a  gift,  to  the  two  houses,  of 
d  general  right  of  adjournment,  which  it  was  known  they  would 
have  without  that  gift,  but  to  restrain  or  abrogate  the  right  it 
Was  known  they  would  have,  in  an  instance  where,  exercised  in 

vdi..  VII.  32 


498  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


I 


its  full  extent,  it  might  lead  to  inconvenience,  and  to  give  that 
right  to  another  who  would  not  naturally  have  had  it.  It  also 
gives  to  the  President  a  right,  which  he  otherwise  would  not 
have  had,  "  to  convene  both  houses,  or  either  of  them,  on  extra- 
ordinary occasions."  Thus  substituting  the  will  of  another, 
where  they  are  not  in  a  situation  to  exercise  their  own. 

"  Every  order,  resolution,  or  vote,  to  which  the  concuiTence 
of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  may  be  necessary 
(e^ccept  on  a  question  of  adjournment),  shall  be  presented  to  the 
President  for  his  approbation,  &c."  Art.  1,  Sec.  7.  The  lati- 
tude of  the  general  words  here  used  would  have  subjected  the 
natural  right  of  adjournment  of  the  two  houses  to  the  will  of 
the  President,  which  was  not  intended.  They  therefore  ex- 
pressly "  except  questions  of  adjournment"  out  of  their  opera- 
tion. They  do  not  here  give  a  right  of  adjom'nment,  which  it 
was  known  would  exist  without  their  gift,  but  they  defend  the  ex- 
isting right  against  the  latitude  of  their  own  phrases,  in  a  case 
where  there  was  no  good  reason  to  abridge  it.  The  exception 
admits  they  will  have  the  right  of  adjournment,  without  point- 
ing out  the  source  from  which  they  will  derive  it. 

These  are  all  the  passages  of  the  constitution  (one  only  ex- 
cepted, which  shall  be  presently  cited)  where  the  right  of  ad- 
journment is  touched  ;  and  it  is  evident  that  none  of  these  are 
introduced  to  give  that  right ;  but  every  one  supposes  it  to  be 
existing,  and  provides  some  specific  modification  for  cases  where 
either  a  defeat  in  the  natural  right,  or  a  too  full  use  of  it,  would 
occasion  inconvenience. 

The  right  of  adjournment,  then,  is  not  given  by  the  constitu- 
tion, and  consequently  it  may  be  modified  by  law  without  inter- 
fering with  that  instrument.  It  is  a  natural  right,  and,  like  all 
other  natural  rights,  may  be  abriged  or  regulated  in  its  exorcise 
by  law ;  and  the  concurrence  of  the  third  branch  in  any  law 
regulating  its  exercise  is  so  efficient  an  ingredient  in  that  law, 
that  the  right  cannot  be  otherwise  exercised  but  after  a  repeal  by 
a  new  law.  The  express  terms  of  the  constitution  itself  show 
*,hat  this  right  may  be  modified  by  law,  when,  in  Art.  1,  Sec.  4 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  499 

(the  only  remaining  passage  on  the  subject  not  yet  quoted)  it 
says,  "  The  Congress  shall  assemble  at  least  once  in  every  year, 
and  such  meeting  shall  be  the  first  Monday  in  December,  unless 
they  shall,  hy  law,  appoint  a  different  day."  Then  another  day 
may  be  appointed  by  law  ;  and  the  President's  assent  is  an  effi'- 
cient  ingredient  in  that  law.  Nay  further,  they  cannot  adjourn 
over  the  first  Monday  of  December  but  by  a  law.  This  is 
another  constitutional  abridgment  of  their  natural  right  of  ad- 
journment ;  and  completing  our  revi'jw  of  all  the  clauses  in  the 
constitution  which  touch  that  right,  authorizes  us  to  say  no  part 
of  that  instrument  gives  it  ;  and  that  the  houses  hold  it,  not 
from  the  constitution,  but  from  nature. 

A  consequence  of  this  is,  that  the  houses  may,  by  a  joint  reso- 
lution, remove  themselves  from  place  to  place,  because  it  is  a 
part  of  their  right  of  self-government ;  but  that  as  the  right  of 
self-government  does  not  comprehend  the  government  of  others, 
the  two  houses  cannot,  by  a  joint  resolution  of  their  majorities 
only,  remove  the  executive  and  judiciary  from  place  to  place. 
These  branches  possessing  also  the  rights  of  self-government  from 
nature,  cannot  be  controlled  in  the  exercise  of  them  but  by  a 
law,  passed  in  the  forms  of  the  constitution.  The  clause  of  the 
bill  in  question,  therefore,  was  necessary  to  be  put  into  the  form  of 
a  law,  and  to  be  submitted  to  the  President,  so  far  as  it  proposes  to 
effect  the  removal  of  the  Executive  and  Judiciary  to  Philadelphia. 
So  far  as  respects  the  removal  of  the  present  houses  of  legisla- 
tion thither,  it  was  not  necessary  to  be  submitted  to  the  Presi- 
dent ;  but  such  a  submission  is  not  repugnant  to  the  constitution. 
On  the  contrary,  if  he  concurs,  it  will  so  far  fix  the  next  session 
of  Congress  at  Philadelphia  that  it  cannot  be  changed  but  by  a 
regular  law. 

The  sense  of  Congress  itself  is  always  respectable  authority. 
It  has  been  given  very  remarkably  on  the  present  subject.  Tlie 
address  to  the  President  in  the  paper  of  the  13th  is  a  complete 
digest  of  all  the  arguments  urged  on  the  floor  cf  the  Represen- 
tatives against  the  constitutionality  of  the  bill  now  before  the 
President;  and  they  were  overruled  by  a  majority  of  that  house, 


500  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

comprehending  the  delegation  of  all  the  States  south  of  the 
Hudson,  except  South  Carolina.  At  the  last  session  of  Con- 
gress, when  the  bill  for  remaining  a  certain  term  at  New  York, 
and  then  removing  to  Susquehanna  or  Germantown  was  object- 
ed to  on  the  same  ground,  the  objection  was  overruled  by  a  ma- 
jority comprehending  the  delegations  of  the  northern  half  of 
the  union  with  that  of  South  Carolina.  So  that  the  sense  of 
every  State  in  the  union  has  been  expressed,  by  its  delegation, 
against  this  objection  South  Carolina  excepted,  and  excepting  also 
Rhode  Island,  which  has  never  yet  had  a  delegation  in  place  to 
vote  on  the  question.  In  both  these  instances,  the  Senate  con- 
curred with  the  majority  of  the  Representatives.  The  sense  of 
the  two  houses  is  stronger  authority  in  this  case,  as  it  is  given 
against  their  own  supposed  privilege. 

It  would  be  as  tedious,  as  it  is  imnecessary,  to  take  up  and 
discuss  one  by  one,  the  objections  proposed  in  the  paper  of  July 
13.  Every  one  of  them  is  founded  on  the  supposition  that  the 
two  houses  hold  their  right  of  adjournment  from  the  constitu- 
tion. This  error  being  corrected,  the  objections  founded  on  it 
fall  of  themselves. 

It  would  also  be  work  of  mere  supererogation  to  show  that, 
granting  what  this  writer  takes  for  granted  (that  the  President's 
assent  would  be  an  inoperative  ingredient,  because  excluded  by 
the  constitution,  as  he  says),  yet  the  particular  views  of  the 
writer  would  be  frustrated,  for  on  every  hypothesis  of  what  the 
President  may  do.  Congress  must  go  to  Philadelphia.  1.  If  he 
assents  to  the  bill,  that  assent  makes  good  law  of  the  part  relative 
to  the  Patomac  ;  and  the  part  for  holding  the  next  session  at 
Philadelphia  is  good,  either  as  an  ordinance,  or  a  vote  of  the  two 
houses,  containing  a  complete  declaration  of  their  will  in  a  case 
where  it  is  competent  to  the  object ;  so  that  they  must  go  to 
Philadelphia  in  that  case.  2.  If  he  dissents  from  the  bill  it 
annuls  the  part  relative  to  the  Patomac  ;  but  as  to  the  clause 
for  adjourning  to  Philadelphia,  his  dissent  being  as  inefficient  as 
his  assent,  it  remains  a  good  ordinance  or  vote,  of  the  two 
houses  for  going  thither,  and  consequently  they  must  go  in  this 


OFFICIAL    PAPEES.  501 

case  also.  3.  If  the  President  withholds  his  will  out  of  the  bill 
altogether,  by  a  ten  days'  silence,  then  the  part  relative  to  the 
Potomac  becomes  a  good  law  without  his  will,  and  that  relative 
to  Philadelphia  is  good  also,  either  as  a  law,  or  an  ordinance,  or 
a  vote  of  the  two  houses ;  and  consequently  in  this  case  also  they 
go  to  Philadelphia. 


IX. — Opinion  respecting  the  expenses  and  salaries  of  foreign 

Ministers. 

July  17,   1790. 

The  bill  on  the  intercourse  with  foreign  nations  restrains  the 
President  from  allowing  to  Ministers  Plenipotentiary,  or  to  Con- 
gress, more  than  f  9,000,  and  $4,500  for  their  "  personal  services, 
and  other  expenses."  This  definition  of  the  objects  for  which  the 
allowance  is  provided  appearing  vague,  the  Secretary  of  State 
thought  it  his  duty  to  confer  with  the  gentlemen  heretofore  em- 
ployed as  ministers  in  Europe,  to  obtain  from  them,  in  aid  of  his 
own  information,  an  enumeration  of  the  expenses  incident  to 
these  oflices,  and  their  opinion  which  of  them  would  be  included 
within  the  fixed  salary,  and  which  would  be  entitled  to  be 
charged  separately.  He,  therefore,  asked  a  conference  with  the 
Vice-President,  who  was  acquainted  with  the  residences  of  Lon- 
don and  the  Hague,  and  the  Chief  Justice,  who  was  acquainted 
with  that  of  Madrid,  which  took  place  yesterday. 

The  Vice-President,  Chief  Justice,  and  Secretary  of  State,  con- 
curred in  the  opinion  that  the  salaries  named  by  the  act  are  much 
below  those  of  the  same  grade  at  the  courts  of  Europe,  and  less 
than  the  public  good  requires  they  should  be.  Consequently, 
that  the  expenses  not  included  within  the  definition  of  the  lav,', 
should  be  allowed  as  an  additional  charge. 

1.  Couriers,  Gazettes,  Translating  necessary  papers,  Print- 
ing necessary  papers,  Aids  to  poor  Americans. — All  three  agreed 
that  these  ought  to  be  allowed  as  additional  charges,  not  includ- 


502  JEFFERSON'S    "WORKS. 

ed  within  the  meaning  of  the  phrase,  "his  personal  services,  and 
other  expenses." 

2.  Postage,  Stationary,  Court-fees. — One  of  the  gentlemeri 
being  of  opinion  that  the  phrase  "  personal  services,  and  other 
expenses,"  was  meant  to  comprehend  all  the  ordinary  expenses 
of  the  office,  considered  this  second  class  of  expenses  as  ordina- 
ry, and  therefore  included  in  the  fixed  salary.  The  first  class 
before  mentioned,  he  had  viewed  as  extraordinary.  The  other 
two  gentlemen  were  of  opinion  this  second  class  was  also  out  of 
the  definition,  and  might  be  allowed  in  addition  to  the  salary. 
One  of  them,  particularly,  considered  the  phrase  as  meaning 
"  personal  services  and  personal  expenses,"  that  is,  expenses  for 
his  personal  accommodation,  comforts,  and  maintenance.  This 
second  class  of  expenses  is  not  within  that  description. 

3.  Ceremonies ;  such  as  diplomatic  and  public  dinners,  galas, 
and  illuminations.  One  gentleman  only  was  of  opinion  these 
might  be  allowed. 

The  expenses  of  the  first  class  may  probably  amount  to  about 
fifty  dollars  a  year.  Those  of  the  second,  to  about  four  or.  five 
hundred  dollars.  Those  of  the  third  are  so  different  at  different 
courts,  and  so  indefinite  in  all  of  them,  that  no  general  estimate 
can  be  proposed. 

The  Secretary  of  State  thought  it  his  duty  to  lay  this  informa- 
tion before  the  President,  supposing  it  might  he  satisfactory  to 
himself,  as  well  as  to  the  diplomatic  gentlemen,  to  leave  nothing 
uncertain  as  to  their  allowances  ;  and  because,  too,  a  previous  de- 
termination is  in  some  degree  necessary  to  the  forming  an  esti- 
mate which  may  not  exceed  the  whole  sum  appropriated. 

The  Secretary  of  State  has  also  consulted  on  the  subject  of 
the  Morocco  consulship,  with  Mr.  Barclay,  who  furnished  him 
with  the  note,  of  which  a  copy  accompanies  this.  Considering 
all  circumstances,  Mr.  Barclay  is  of  opinion,  we  had  better  have 
only  a  consul  there,  and  that  he  should  be  the  one  now  residing 
at  Morocco,  because,  as  secretary  to  the  Emperoi,  he  sees  him 
every  day,  and  possesses  his  ear.  He  is  of  opinion  six  hundred 
dollars  a  year  might  suffice  for  him,  and  that  it  shonld  he  pr'^pos- 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  593 

ed  to  him  not  as  a  salary,  but  as  a  sum  in  gross  intended  to  cover 
his  expenses,  and  to  save  the  trouble  of  keeping  accounts.  That 
»his  consul  should  be  authorized  to  appoint  agents  in  the  sea- 
ports, who  would  be  sufficiently  paid  by  the  consignments  of 
vessels.  He  thinks  the  consul  at  Morocco  would  most  conve- 
niently receive  his  allowance  through  the  channel  of  our  Charge 
at  Madrid,  on  whom,  also,  this  consulate  had  better  be  made  de- 
pendent for  instructions,  information,  and  correspondence,  be- 
cause of  the  daily  intercourse  between  Morocco  and  Cadiz. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  on  a  view  of  Mr.  Barclay's  note,  very 
much  doubts  the  sufficiency  of  the  sum  of  six  hundred  dollars ;  he 
supposes  a  little  moiley  there  may  save  a  great  deal ;  but  he  is 
unable  to  propose  any  specific  augmentation  till  a  view  of  the 
whole  diplomatic  establishments  and  its  expenses,  may  furnish 
better  grounds  for  it. 

[Appended  to  this  note,  were  the  following  estimate  of  the  expenses  of  foreign 
ministers,  and  of  the  probable  calls  on  our  foreign  fund,  from  July  1,  lV9ii,  tio  July 
1,  17  ill.— Ed.] 

Estimate  of  the  Expenses  of  a  Minister  Plenipotentiary. 

July  19,  1790. 

Minister  Plenipotentiary,  his  salary      . $9,000 

His  outfit,  suppose  it  to  happen  once  in  seven  years,  will  average    .    .  1,285 

His  return  at  a  quarter's  salary  will  average .  321 

Extras,  viz.:  Gazettes,  Translating,  Printing,  Aids  to  poor  American  sail- 
ors, Couriers,  and  Postage,  about 3S0 

His  Secretary 1,350 

112,396 

Estimate  for  a  Charge  des  Affaires. 

Charge  des  Affaires,  his  salary S4,500 

His  outfit,  once  in  seven  years,  equal  to  an  annual  sum  of     .     .     .          .  643 

His  return  at  a  quarter's  salary,  do If  1 

Extras,  as  above ^^^ 

|6,654 

The  Agent  at  the  Hagtie,  his  salary  :     • $1,300 

Eitras 10*^ 

$1,400 


504  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Mstimate  of  the  Annual  Expenses  of  the  Establishment  proposed, 

France,  a  Minister  Plenipotentiary $12,306 

London,         do.                 do.               12,306 

Madrid,  a  Charge  des  AflFairea 6,654 

Lisbon,         do.       do.       do.           5,654 

Hague,  an  agent          ...          1,400 

Morocco,  a  consul       1,800 

Presents  to  foreign  ministers  on  taking  leave,  at  $1,000  each,  more  or  less, 
according  to  their  favor  and  time.  There  will  be  five  of  them.  If  ex- 
changed once  in  seven  years,  it  mil  be  annually 715 


$39,835 


Estimate  of  the  probable  calls  on  our  foreign  fund  from  July  1,  1190,  when  the 

act  for  foreign  intercourse  passed,  to  July  1,  1191. 

France,  a  Minister  Plenipotentiary,  his  outfit f  9,000 

His  salary,  suppose  it  to  commence  August  1st 8,250 

Extras 320 

Secretary 1,237.5— $18,807.6 

Charge,  suppose  him  to  remain  till  November  Ist.     Salary  1,500 

Extras    .     .              117 

His  return,  a  quarter's  salary    .             1,125    —    2,742 

Madrid,  a  Charge,  his  salary        4,500 

Extras 350    —    4,850 

Lisbon,  a  ChargS,  (or  Resident,)  his  outfit 4.500 

His  salary,  suppose  it  to  commence  January  1,  1791      .    .    .  2,250 

Extras   .              175    —    6,925 

London,  an  Agent,  suppose  to  commence  October  1st,  at 

$1,350  salary             1,012.5 

Eztras,  (at  $100  a  year) 75   —     1,087.6 

Hague,  an  Agent         .         .     •     .     .     .          1,400 

Morocco,  Consul 1,800    —    3,200 

Presents  to  foreign  Ministers.     The  dye  about 500 

Two  medals  and  chains       2,000    —    2,500 


$40,112 


X. — Opinion  in  regard  to  the  continuance  of  the  monopoly  of 
the  commerce  of  the  Creek  nation,  enjoyed  by  Col.  McGil- 
livray  : 

July  '29th,  1790. 

f/olonel  McGillivray,  with  a  company  of  British  merchants, 
having  hitherto  enjoyed  a  monopoly  of  the  commerce  of  the 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  505 

Creek  nation,  with  a  right  of  importing  their  goods  duty  free, 
and  considering  these  privileges  as  the  principal  sources  of  his 
power  over  that  nation,  is  unwilling  to  enter  into  treaty  with  us, 
unless  they  can  be  continued  to  him.  And  the  question  is  how 
this  may  be  done  consistently  with  our  laws,  and  so  as  to  avoid 
just  complaints  from  those  of  our  citizens  who  would  wish  to 
participate  of  the  trade  ? 

Our  citizens,  at  this  time,  are  not  permitted  to  trade  in  that 
nation.  The  nation  has  a  right  to  give  us  their  peace,  and  to 
withhold  their  commerce,  to  place  it  under  whatever  monopolies 
or  regulations  they  please.  If  they  insist  that  only  Colonel 
McGillivray  and  his  company  shall  be  permitted  to  trade  amoitg 
them,  we  have  no  right  to  say  the  contrary.  We  shall  even  gain 
some  advantage  in  substituting  citizens  of  the  United  States  in- 
stead of  British  subjects,  as  associates  of  Colonel  McGillivray, 
and  excluding  both  British  and  Spaniards  from  the  country. 

Suppose,  then,  it  be  expressly  stipulated  by  treaty,  that  no  per- 
son be  permitted  to  trade  in  the  Creek  country,  without  a  license 
from  the  President,  that  but  a  fixed  number  shall  be  permitted 
to  trade  there  at  all,  and  that  the  goods  imported  for  and  sent  to 
the  Creek  nation,  shall  be  duty  free.  It  may  further  be  either 
expressed  that  the  person  licensed  shall  be  approved  by  the  leader 
or  leaders  of  the  nation,  or  without  this,  it  may  be  understood 
between  the  President  and  McGillivray  that  the  stipulated  number 
of  licenses  shall  be  sent  to  him  blank,  to  fill  up.  A  treaty  made 
by  the  President,  with  the  concurrence  of  two-thirds  of  the 
Senate,  is  a  law  of  the  land,  and  a  law  of  superior  order,  because 
it  not  only  repeals  past  laws,  but  cannot  itself  be  repealed  by  fu- 
ture ones.*  The  treaty,  then,  will  legally  control  the  duty  acts, 
and  the  acts  for  licensing  traders,  in  this  particular  instance. 
When  a  citizen  applies  for  a  license,  who  is  not  of  McGillivray's 

*  [At  a  later  period,  upou  reviewing  this  opinion,  the  following  note  was  ap- 
pended by  Mr.  Jefferson. — Ed — viz.]  "  Unless  with  the  consent  or  default  of  the 
other  contracting  party.  It  may  well  be  doubted,  too,  aud  perhaps  denied,  that 
the  treaty  power  can  control  a  law.  The  question  here  proposed  was  then  of  the 
first  impression.  Subsequent  investigations  have  proved  that  the  contrary  po- 
sition ia  the  more  general  truth. 


506  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

partiiersliip,  he  will  be  told  that  but  a  given  number  could  be 
licensed  by  the  treaty,  and  that  the  number  is  full.  It  seems 
that  in  this  wa^r  no  law  will  be  violated,  and  no  just  cause  of 
complaint  will  be  given ;  on  the  contrary,  the  treaty  will  have 
bettered  our  situation,  though  not  in  the  full  degree  which  might 
have  betsn  wished. 


XI. —  Opinion  respecting  our  foreign  debt. 

August  26.  1790. 

On  consideration  of  the  letter  of  our  banker,  of  January  25th, 
1790,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasui-y's  answer  to  it,  and  the 
draught  of  powers  and  instructions  to  him,  I  am  of  opinion,  as  I 
always  have  been,  that  the  purchase  of  our  debt  to  France  by 
private  speculators,  would  have  been  an  operation  extremely  in- 
jurious to  our  credit ;  and  that  the  consequence  foreseen  by  our 
banker,  that  the  purchasers  would  have  been  obliged,  in  order 
to  make  good  their  payments,  to  deluge  the  markets  of  Amster- 
dam with  American  paper  of  all  sorts,  and  to  sell  it  at  any  price, 
was  a  probable  one.  And  the.  more  so,  as  we  kuow  that  the  par- 
ticular individuals  who  were  engaged  in  that  speculation,  possess 
no  means  of  their  own  adequate  to  the  piayments  they  would 
have  had  to  make.  While  we  must  not  doubt  that  these  mo- 
tives, together  with  a  proper  regard  for  the  credit  of  the  United 
States,  had  real  and  full  weight  \Y\l\i  our  bankers,  towards  in- 
ducing them  to  counterwork  these  private  speculations  ;  yet,  to 
ascribe  their  industry  in  this  business  wholly  to  these  motives, 
might  lead  to  a  too  great  and  dangerous  confidence  in  them.  It 
was  obviously  their  interest  to  defeat  all  such  speculations,  be- 
cause they  tended  to  take  out  of  their  hands,  or  at  least  to  divide 
with  them,  the  profits  of  the  great  operation  of  transferring  the 
French  debt  to  Amsteruam,  an  object  of  first  rate  magnitude  to 
them,  and  on  the  undivided  enjoyments  of  which  they  might 
count,  if  private  speculators  could  be  baffled.  It  has  been  a  con- 
test o.t  dexterity  and  cunning,  in  which  our  champions  have  ob- 


OEFIOIAL    PAPERS.  507 

obtained  the  victory.  The  mancEuvre  of  opening  a  loan  of  three 
millions  of  florins,  has,  on  the  whole,  been  useful  to  the  United 
States,  and  though  unauthorized,  I  think  should  be  confirmed. 
The  measure  proposed  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  of 
sending  a  superintendent  of  their  future  operations,  will  elFect- 
ually  prevent  their  doing  the  like  again,  and  the  funding  laws 
leave  no  danger  that  such  an  expedient  might  at  any  future  time 
be  useful  to  us. 

The  report  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  and  the  draught 
of  instructions,  present  this  plan  to  view :  First,  to  borrow  on 
the  best  terms  we  can,  not  exceeding  those  limited  by  the  law, 
such  a  sum  as  may  answer  all  demands  of  principal  or  interest  of 
the  foreign  debts,  due,  or  to  become  due  before  the  end  of  1791. 
[This  I  think  he  supposes  will  be  about  three  and  a  half  millions 
of  dollars.]  Second,  to  consider  two  of  the  three  millions  of 
florins  already  borrowed  by  our  bankers  as,  so  far,  an  execution 
of  this  operation  ;  consequently,  that  there  will  remain  but  about 
two  and  a  half  millions  of  dollars  to  be  borrowed  on  the  old 
terms.  Third,  to  borrow  no  more  as  yet,  towards  completing 
the  transfer  of  the  French  debt  to  Amsterdam,  unless  we  can  do 
it  on  more  advantageous  terms.  Fourth,  to  consider  the  third 
millions  of  florins  already  borrowed  by  our  bankers,  as,  so  far, 
an  execution  of  the  powers  given  the  President  to  borrow  two 
millions  of  dollars,  by  the  act  of  the  12th  of  August.  The  whole 
of  this  appears  to  me  to  be  wise.  If  the  third  million  be  em- 
ployed in  buying  up  oar  foreign  paper,  on  the  exchange  of  Am- 
sterdam, by  creating  a  demand  for  that  species  of  paper,  it  will 
excite  a  cupidity  in  the  monied  men  to  obtain  more  of  it  by  new 
loans,  and  consequently  enable  us  to  borrow  more  and  on  lower 
terms.  The  saving  of  interest,  too,  on  the  sum  so  to  be  bought, 
may  be  applied  in  buying  up  more  principal,  and  thereby  keep 
this  salutary  operation  going. 

I  would  only  take  the  liberty  of  suggesting   the  insertion   of  . 
some  such  clause  as  the  following,  into  the  instructions :  "  The 
agents  to  be  employed  shall  never  open  a  loan  for  more  than  one 
million  of  dollars  at  a  time,  nor  open  a  new  loan  till  the  pre- 


508  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

ceding  one  has  been  filled,  and  expressly  approved  by  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States."  A  new  man,  alighting  on  the 
exchange  of  Amsterdam,  with  powers  to  borrow  twelve  millions 
of  dollars,  will  be  immediately  beset  with  bankers  and  brokers, 
who  will  pour  into  his  ear,  from  the  most  unsuspected  quarters, 
such  informations  and  suspicions  as  may  lead  him  exactly  into 
their  snares.  So  wonderfully  dexterous  are  they  in  wrapping 
up  and  complicating  their  propositions,  they  will  make  it  evident, 
even  to  a  clear-headed  man,  '(not  in  the  habit  of  this  business,) 
that  two  and  two  make  five.  The  agent,  therefore,  should  be 
guarded,  even  against  himself,  by  putting  it  out  of  his  power  to 
extend  the  effect  of  any  erroneous  calculation  beyond  one  million 
of  dollars.  Were  he  able,  under  a  delusive  calculation,  to  com- 
mit such  a  sum  as  twelve  millions  of  dollars,  what  would  be 
said  of  the  government  ?  Our  bankers  told  me  themselves  that 
they  would  not  choose,  in  the  conduct  of  this  great  loan,  to  open 
for  more  than  two  or  three  millions  of  florins  at  a  time,  and  cer- 
tainly never  for  more  than  five.  By  contracting  for  only  one 
million  of  dollars  at  a  time,  the  agent  will  have  frequent  occa- 
sions of  trying  to  better  the  terms.  I  dare  say  that  this  caution, 
though  not  expressed  in  the  instructions,  is  intended  by  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Treasury  to  be  carried  into  their  execution.  But, 
perhaps,  it  will  be  desirable  for  the  President,  that  his  sense  of 
it  also  should  be  expressed  in  writing. 


XII. — Opinion  upon  the  question  what  the  answer  of  the  Presi- 
dent should  be  in  case  Lord  Dorchester  should  apply  for  per- 
mission to  march  troops  through  the  territory  of  the  United 
States,  from  Detroit  to  the  Mississippi. 

GEORGE    WASHINGTON    TO    THOMAS    JEFFERSON. 

Unitkd  Statks,  August  27,  1790. 
Provided  the  dispute  between  Great  Britain  and  Spain  should  come  to  the  d«- 
cijion  of  ai'ms,  from  a  variety  of  oiroumstauees  (individually  unimportant  and  in- 
jouolusive,  but  very  much  the  reverse  when  compared  and  combined),  there  is  no 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS  509 

doubt  in  my  mind,  that  New  Orleans,  and  the  Spanish  posts  above  it  on  the 
Mississippi,  -will  be  among  the  first  attempts  of  the  former ;  and  that  the  reduction 
of  them  T/ill  be  undertaken  by  a  combined  operation  from  Detroit. 

The  consequences  of  having  so  formidable  and  enterprizing  a  people  as  the  Brit- 
ish on  both  our  flanks  and  rear,  with  their  navy  in  front,  as  they  respect  our 
western  settlements  which  may  be  seduced  thereby,  as  they  regard  the  security 
of  the  Union  and  its  commerce  with  the  West  Indies,  are  too  obvious  to  need 
enumeration. 

What  then  should  be  the  answer  of  the  Executive  of  the  United  States  to  Lord 
Dorchester,  in  case  he  should  apply  for  permission  to  march  troops  through  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  said  States  from  Detroit  to  the  Mississippi? 

What  notice  ought  bo  taken  of  the  measure,  if  it  should  be  undertaken  without 
leave,  which  is  the  most  probable  proceeding  of  the  two  ? 

The  opinion  of  the  Secretary  of  State  is  requested  in  writing  upon  the  above 
statements. 


Opinion  on  the  questions  stated  in  the  President's  note  of  August 

27th,  1790. 

Angu<it  -.'S,  1790. 

I  am  so  deeply  impressed  with  the  magnitude  of  the  dangers 
which  will  attend  our  government,  if  Louisiana  and  the  Floridas 
be  added  to  the  British  empire,  that,  in  my  opinion,  we  ought 
to  make  ourselves  parties  in  the  general  war  expected  to  take 
place,  should  this  be  the  only  means  of  preventing  the  calamity. 

But  I  think  we  should  defer  this  step  as  long  as  possible ;  be- 
cause war  is  full  of  chances,  which  may  relieve  us  from  the 
necessity  of  interfering  ;  and  if  necessary,  still  the  later  we  inter- 
fere, the  better  we  shall  be  prepared. 

It  is  often  indeed  more  easy  to  prevent  the  capture  of  a  place, 
than  to  retake  it.  Should  it  be  so  in  the  case  in  question,  the 
difference  between  the  two  operations  of  preventing  and  re- 
taking, will  not  be  so  costly  as  two,  three,  or  four  years  more  of 
war. 

So  that  I  am  for  preserving  neutrality  as  long,  and  entering 
into  the  war  as  late,  as  possible. 

If  this  be  the  best  course,  it  decides,  in  a  good  degree,  what 
should  be  our  conduct,  if  the  British  ask  leave  to  march  troops 
through  our  territory,  or  march  them  without  leave. 

It  is  well  enough  agreed,  in  the  laws  of  nations,  that  for  a  neu- 


510  JEFFERSON'S    WOKKS. 

tral  power  to  give  or  refuse  permission  to  the  troops  of  either  bel- 
ligerent party  to  pass  through  their  territory,  is  no  breach  of  neu- 
trality, provided  the  same  refusal  or  permission  be  extended  to 
the  other  party. 

If  we  give  leave  of  passage  then  to  the  British  troops,  Spain 
will  have  no  just  cause  of  complaint  against  us,  provided  we  ex- 
tend the  same  leave  to  her  when  demanded. 

If  we  refuse,  (as  indeed  we  have  a  right  to  do,)  and  the  troops 
should  pass  notwithstanding,  of  which  there  can  be  little  doubt, 
we  shall  stand  committed.  For  either  we  must  enter  immediately 
into  the  war,  or  pocket  an  acknowledged  insult  in  the  face  of 
the  world ;  and  one  insult  pocketed  soon  produces  another. 

There  is  indeed  a  middle  course,  which  I  should  be  inclined 
to  prefer  ;  that  is,  to  avoid  giving  any  answer.  They  will  pro- 
ceed notwithstanding,  but  to  do  this  under  our  silence,  will  ad- 
mit of  palliation,  and  produce  apologies,  from  military  necessity ; 
and  will  leave  us  free  to  pass  it  over  without  dishonor,  or  to 
make  it  a  handle  of  quarrel  hereafter,  if  we  should  have  use  for 
it  as  such.  But,  if  we  are  obliged  to  give  an  answer,  I  think  the 
occasion  not  such  as  should  induce  us  to  hazard  that  answer 
which  might  commit  us  to  the  war  at  so  early  a  stage  of  it ;  and 
therefore  that  the  passage  should  be  permitted. 

If  they  should  pass  without  having  asked  leave,  I  should  be 
for  expressing  our  dissatisfaction  to  the  British  court,  and  keep- 
ing alive  an  altercation  on  the  subject,  till  events  should  decide 
whether  it  is  most  expedient  to  accept  their  apologies,  or  profit 
of  the  aggression  as  a  cause  of  war. 


XIII. — Opinion  on  the  question  whether  it  will  be  expedient  to 
notify  to  Lord  Dorchester  the  real  object  of  t/\e  expedition  pre- 
paring by  Governor  St.  Clair. 

August  29.  1B90. 

On  considering  more  fully  the  question  whether  it  will  be  ex- 
pedient to  notify  to  Lord  Dorchester  the  real  object  of  the  ex- 
pedition preparing  by  Governor  St.  Clair,  I  still  think  it  will  not 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  511 

be  expedient.  For,  if  the  notification  be  early,  he  will  gut  the 
Indians  out  of  the  way,  and  defeat  our  object.  If  it  be  so  late 
as  not  to  leave  him  time  to  withdraw  them  before  our  stroke  be 
struck,  it  will  then  be  so  late  also  as  not  to  leave  him  time  to 
withdraw  any  secret  aids  he  may  have  sent  them.  And  the 
notification  will  betray  to  him  that  he  may  go  on  without  fear 
in  his  expedition  against  the  Spaniards,  and  for  which  he  may 
yet  have  sufficient  time  after  our  expedition  is  over.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  he  should  suspect  our  preparations  are  to  prevent 
his  passing  our  territory,  these  suspicions  may  induce  him  to 
decline  his  expedition,  as,  even  should  he  think  he  could  either 
force  or  steal  a  passage,  he  would  not  divide  his  troops,  leaving 
(as  he  would  suppose)  an  enemy  between  them  able  to  take 
those  he  should  leave,  and  cut  off  the  return  of  those  he  should 
carry.  These  suspicions,  too,  would  mislead  both  him  and  the 
Indians,  and  so  enable  us  to  take  the  latter  more  completely  by 
surprise,  and  prevent  him  from  sending  secret  aid  to  those  whom 
he  would  not  suppose  the  objects  of  the  enterprise  ;  thus  efiecting 
a  double  purpose  of  preventing  his  enterprise,  and  securing*  our 
own.  Might  it  not  even  be  expedient,  with  a  view  to  deter  his 
enterprise,  to  instruct  Governor  St.  Clair  either  to  continue  his 
pursuit  of  the  Indians  till  the  season  be  too  far  advanced  for 
Lord  Dorchester  to  move  ;  or,  on  disbanding  his  militia,  to  give 
them  general  orders  (which  might  reach  the  ears  of  Lord  Dor- 
chester) to  be  ready  to  assemble  at  a  moment's  warning,  though 
no  such  assembly  be  really  intended  ? 

Always  taking  care  neither  to  say  nor  do,  against  their  pas- 
sage, what  might  directly  commit  either  our  peace  or  honor. 


XIV. —  Opinion  on  proceedings  to  be  had  under  the  Residence  act. 

November  29,  1790. 

A  territory  not  exceeding  ten  miles  square  (or,  I  presume,  one 
nundred  square  miles  in  any  form)  to  be  located  by  metes  and 
bounds. 


512  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Three  commissioners  to  be  appointed.  I  suppose  them  not 
entitled  to  any  salary. 

[If  they  live  near  the  place  they  may,  in  some  instances,  be 
influenced  by  self  interest,  and  partialities  ;  but  they  will  push 
the  work  with  zeal.  If  they  are  from  a  distance,  and  north- 
wardly, they  will  be  more  impartial,  but  may  affect  delays.] 

The  commissioners  to  purchase  or  accept  "  such  quantity  of 
land  on  the  east  side  of  the  river  as  the  President  shall  deem 
proper  for  the  United  States"  viz.,  for  the  federal  Capitol,  the 
offices,  the  President's  house  and  gardens,  the  town  house,  mar- 
ket house,  public  walks  and  hospital.  For  the  President's  house, 
offices  and  gardens,  I  should  think  two  squares  should  be  con- 
solidated. For  the  Capitol  and  offices,  one  square.  For  the 
market,  one  square.  For  the  public  walks,  nine  squares  consoli- 
dated. 

The  expression  "  such  quantity  of  land  as  the  President  shall 
Aeera  proper  for  the  United  States,"  is  vague.  It  may  therefore 
be  extended  to  the  acceptance  or  purchase  of  land  enough  for 
the  town  ;  and  I  have  no  doubt  it  is  the  wish,  and  perhaps  ex- 
pectation. In  that  case,  it  will  be  to  be  laid  out  in  lots  and 
streets.  I  should  propose  these  to  be  at  right  angles,  as  in  Phila- 
delphia, and  that  no  street  l)e  narrower  than  one  hundred  feet, 
with  foot  ways  of  fifteen  feet.  Where  a  street  is  long  and  level, 
it  might  be  one  hundred  and  twenty  feet  wide.  I  should  prefer 
squares  of  at  least  two  hundred  yards  every  way,  which  will  be 
about  eight  acres  each. 

The  commissioners  should  have  some  taste  in  architecture,  be- 
cause they  may  have  to  decide  between  different  plans. 

They  will,  however,  be  subject  to  the  President's  direction  in 
every  point. 

When  the  President  shall  have  made  up  his  mind  as  to  the 
spot  for  the  town,  would  there  be  any  impropriety  in  his  saying 
to  the  neighboring  land  holders,  "  I  will  fix  the  town  here  if  you 
will  join  and  purchase  and  give  the  lands."  They  may  well  af- 
ford it  by  the  increase  of  value  it  will  give  to  their  own  ci-'cum- 
jacent  lands. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  513 

The  lots  to  be  sold  out  in  breadths  of  fifty  feet ;  their  depths 
to  extend  to  the  diagonal  of  the  square. 

I  doubt  much  whether  the  obligation  to  build  the  houses  at  a 
given  distance  from  the  street,  contributes  to  its  beauty.  It  pro- 
duces a  disgusting  monotony ;  all  persons  make  this  complaint 
against  Philadelphia.  The  contrary  practice  varies  the  appear- 
ance, and  is  much  more  convenient  to  the  inhabitants. 

In  Paris  it  is  forbidden  to  build  a  house  beyond  a  given  height  ; 
and  it  is  admitted  to  be  a  good  restriction.  It  keeps  down  the 
price  of  ground,  keeps  the  houses  low  and  convenient,  and  the 
streets  light  and  airy.  Fires  are  much  more  manageable  where 
houses  are  low. 


XV. — Report  hy  the  Secretary  of  State  to  the  President  of  the 
United  States  on  the  Report  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Govern- 
ment north-west  of  the   Ohio. 

Decernhei'  14,  1790. 

The  Secretary  of  State  having  had  under  his  consideration 
the  report  made  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Government  north-west 
of  the  Ohio,  of  his  proceedings  for  carrying  into  effect  the  reso- 
lution of  Congress  of  August  29th,  1788,  respecting  the  lands  of 
the  inhabitants  of  Port  Vincennes,  makes  the  following  report 
thereon  to  the  President  of  the  United  States  : 

The  resolution  of  Congress  of  August  29th,  1788,  had  con- 
firmed in  their  possessions  and  titles  the  French  and  Canadian 
inhabitants  and  other  settlers  at  that  post,  who,  in  or  before  the 
year  1783,  had  settled  there,  and  had  professed  themselves  citi- 
zens of  the  United  States  or  any  of  them,  and  had  made  a  do- 
nation to  every  head  of  a  family,  of  the  same  description  of 
four  hundred  acres  of  land,  part  of  a  square  to  be  laid  off  ad- 
jjining  the  improvements  at  the  post. 

The  Secretary  of  the  north-western  government,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  the  Governor,  has  carried  this  resolution  into  elTect,  as 
to  all  the  claims  to  which  he  thought  it  could  be  clearly  applied  : 
VOL.  VII.  33 


514  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

there    remain,  however,  the  following  description  of  cases,  on 
which  he  asks  further  instructions  : 

1.  Certain  cases  within  the  letter  of  the  resolution,  but  ren- 
dered doubtful  by  the  condition  annexed,  to  the  grants  of  lands 
in  the  Illinois  country.  The  cases  of  these  claimants,  fifteen  in 
number,  are  specially  stated  in  the  papers  hereto  annexed,  num- 
ber 2,  and  the  lands  are  laid  off  for  them  but  remain  ungranted 
till  further  orders. 

2.  Certain  persons  who,  by  removals  from  one  part  of  the 
territory  to  another,  are  not  of  the  letter  of  the  resolutions,  but 
within  its  equity,  as  they  conceive. 

3.  Certain  heads  of  families,  who  became  such  soon  after 
the  year  1783,  who  petition  for  a  participation  of  the  donation, 
and  urge  extraordinary  militia  service  to  which  they  are  ex- 
posed. 

4.  One  hundred  and  fifty  acres  of  land  within  the  village 
granted  under  the  former  government  of  that  country,  to  the 
Piankeshaw  Indians,  and  on  their  removal  sold  by  them  in  par- 
cels to  individual  inhabitants,  who  in  some  instances  have  highly 
improved  them  both  before  and  since  the  year  1783. 

5.  Lands  granted  both  before  and  after  1783,  by  authority 
from  the  commandant  of  the  post,  who,  according  to  the  usage 
under  the  French  and  British  governments,  thinking  himself 
authorized  to  grant  lands,  delegated  that  authority  to  a  court  of 
civil  and  criminal  jurisdiction,  whose  grants  before  1783,  amount 
to  twenty-six  thousand  acres,  and  between  that  and  1787,  (when 
the  practice  was  stopped,)  to  twenty-two  thousand  acres.  They 
are  generally  in  parcels  from  four  hundred  acres  down  to  the  size 
of  house  lots  ;  and  some  of  them  under  considerable  improve- 
ment. Some  of  the  tenants  urge  that  they  were  induced  by  the 
court  itself  to  come  and  settle  these  lands  under  assurance  of 
their  authority  to  grant  them,  and  that  a  loss  of  the  lands  and 
improvements  will  involve  them  in  ruin.  Besides  these  small 
grants,  there  are  some  much  larger,  sometimes  of  many  leagues 
square,  which  a  sense  of  their  impropriety  has  prevented  the 
grantees  from  bringing  forward.     Many  pretended  grants,  too,  of 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  5I5 

tnis  class  are  believed  to  be  forgeries,  and  are,  therefore,  to  be 
guarded  against. 

6.  Two  thousand  four  hundred  acres  of  good  land,  and  three 
thousand  acres  of  sunken  land,  held  under  the  French,  British, 
and  American  governments,  as  commons  for  the  use  of  the  in- 
habitants of  the  village  generally,  and  for  thirty  years  past  kept 
under  inclosure  for  these  purposes. 

The  legislature  alone  being  competent  to  authorize  the  grant 
of  lands  in  cases  as  yet  unprovided  for  by  the  laws.  The  Secre- 
tary of  State  is  of  opinion  that  the  report  of  the  Secretary  of 
the  north-western  government,  with  the  papers  therein  referred 
to,  should  be  laid  before  Congress  for  their  determination.  Au- 
thentic copies  of  them  are  herewith  enclosed  to  the  President 
of  the  United  States 


XVI. —  Opinion  on  certain  proceedings  of  the  Executive  in  the 
North-western  Territory. 

DecLMiiber  14,  IViO. 

The  Secretary  of  State  having  had  imder  his  consideration, 
the  journal  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Executive  in  the  North- 
western Territory,  thinks  it  his  duty  to  extract  therefrom,  for  the 
notice  of  the  President  of  the  United  States,  the  articles  of  April 
25th,  June  6th,  28th,  and  29th.  Some  of  which  are  hereto  an- 
nexed. 

Conceiving  that  the  regulations,  purported  in  these  articles,  are 
beyond  the  competence  of  the  executive  of  the  said  government, 
that  they  amount,  in  fact,  to  laws,  and  as  such,  could  only  flow 
from  its  regular  legislature.  That  it  is  the  duty  of  the  general 
government  to  guard  its  subordinate  members  from  the  encroach- 
ments of  each  other,  even  when  they  are  made  through  error  or 
inadvertence,  and  to  cover  its  citizens  from  the  exercise  of  pow- 
ers not  authorized  by  the  law.  The  Secretary  of  State  is  of 
3pinion  that  the  said  articles  be  laid  before  the  Attorney  Genera! 
for  consideration,  and  if  he  finds  them  to  be  against  law,  that  hi£ 


516  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

opinion  De  communicated  to  the  Governor  of  the  North-western 
Territory,  for  his  future  conduct. 

[The  following  are  the  extracts  alluded  to  above.] 

Extracts  from  the  Journal  of  the  Proceedings  in  the  Executive  Department  of  g(»frn 
ment  in  the  Territory  of  the  United  States,  north-west  of  the  Ohio,  reported  to  thi 
President  of  the  United  States,  by  Winthrop  Sargent,  Secretary. 
April  25,  1790. — The  governor  was  pleased  to  issue  the  folio-wing  order,  viz.; 
All  the  inhabitants  are  forbidden  to  entertain  any  strangers,  white,  Indian,  or  ne- 
gro, let  them  eome  from  whatsoever  place,  without  acquainting  the  officer  com- 
manding the  troops,  of  the  names  of  such  strangers,  and  the  place  from  whence 
they  came.     And  every  stranger  arriving  at  Cahokia,  is  ordered  to  present  him- 
self to  said  officer  within  two  hours  after  his  arrival,  on  pain  of  imprisonment, 

June  6,  1790. — ^The  Governor  at  KaskasHas,  was  pleased  to  make  the  following 
proclamation  : 

The  practice  of  selling  spirituous  liquors  to  the  Indians  in  the  villages  being 
attended  with  very  ill  consequences,  it  is  expressly  prohibited;  and  all  and  every 
person  transgressing  this  order,  will  be  liable  to  be  tried  and  fined  at  the  pleas- 
ure of  the  court  of  quarter  sessions  of  the  peace.  And  as  it  may  be  necessary  that 
spirituous  liquors  should  be  vended  in  small  quantities  to  white  travellers  and 
others ;  to  prevent  all  danger  of  imposition  and  extortion,  no  person  whosoever 
shall  sell  in  any  of  the  villages  or  their  environs,  spirituous  liquors  to  any  white 
person,  traveller,  or  inhabitant,  in  any  quantity  less  than  one  quart  at  one  time, 
without  obtaining  a  license  from  the  governor,  which  license  shall  not  be  granted 
but  upon  the  recommendation  of  the  Justices  of  the  Peace  in  their  court  of  quar- 
ter sessions,  and  on  his  or  their  giving  security  in  the  sum  of  two  hundred  dollars, 
to  abide  by  all  the  regulations  made  by  law  respecting  retailers  of  spirituous 
liquors,  and  the  orders  of  the  said  court  of  quarter  sessions  in  the  premises  in  the 
meantime.  And  for  every  offence,  he  or  they  shall  be  liable  to  prosecution  by 
indictment  and  fine  at  the  pleasure  of  the  court,  and  to  the  forfeiture  of  their 
bonds. 

Nor  shall  any  person  undertake  or  exercise  the  calling  or  occupation  of  an  Inn- 
holder  or  Tavern-keeper,  without  obtaining  in  the  same  manner,  and  under  the 
same  restrictions  and  penalties,  a  license  for  so  doing. 

Proclamation. — ^Whereas,  his  Excellency,  Arthur  St.  Clair,  Esq.,  governor  and 
commander-in-chief  of  this  Territory,  did  by  proclamation  given  at  the  Kaskaa- 
kias  the  10th  instant,  strictly  prohibit  all  persons,  not  citizens  of  the  United 
States  or  the  Territory,  from  hunting  or  killing  any  kind  of  game  within  the 
same,  either  for  the  flesh  or  skins,  upon  penalty  not  only  of  forfeiting  the  flesh  and 
skina  which  they  might  acquire,  but  also  pr.osecution  and  punishment  as  tree- 
passers. 

And  it  appearing  to  me  to  be  particularly  essential  to  the  interests  of  this 
country,  that  an  observance  of  the  order  and  prohibition  should  be  obtained,  I 
do  lifreby  call  upon  all  civil  and  military  officers,  who  now  are,  or  hereafter  may 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  517 

be  appointed,  to  use  their  best  endeavors  for  detecting  and  bringing  to  justice 
every  person  who  shall  violate  the  same.  And,  whereas,  it  appears  to  me  to  be 
expedient  that  government  should  i-eceive  information  of  all  characters,  foreigners 
and  others,  coming  into  the  Territory,  I  do  hereby  order  and  direct  that  any  per- 
son arriving  at  this,  or  any  of  the  military  posts  of  the  United  States  withiu  the 
same,  should  present  himself  to  the  commanding  officer  of  the  troops  in  two  hours 
next  after  his  arrival ;  and  the  inhabitants  are  hereby  forbidden  to  entertain  such 
characters,  whether  whites,  Indians,  or  negroes,  without  immediate  information 
thereof  to  the  said  commanding  officers. 

Given  under  my  hand  and  seal  at  the  town  of  Post  Vincennes,  and  county  of 
Knox,  this  28th  day  of  June,  A.  D.  1790,  and  of  the  Independence  of  the  United 
States,  the  fourteenth. 

(Signed,)  Wintheop  Sakgi-xt. 

June  29,  I'?  90. — It  is  to  be  considered  as  a  standing  order  hereafter,  that  no 
person  enrolled  in  the  militia  shall  leave  the  village  or  stations,  for  a  longer  ab- 
sence than  twenty-four  hours,  without  informing  him  (Mayor  Hamtramck)  or  the 
commanding  officer  for  the  time  being,  of  their  intention.  And  all  intelligence 
or  discoveries  of  Indians,  to  be  immediately  reported. 

(Signed,)  Wintheop  Saugknt. 


XVII. — Report  on  certain  letters  from  the  President  to  Mr. 
Gouverneur  Morris,  and  from  Mr.  Morris  to  the  President, 
relative  to  our  difficulties  with  England — 1790. 

December  15,  1790. 

The  Secretary  of  State  having  had  under  consideration  the 
two  letters  of  October  13th,  1789,  from  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  to  Mr.  Gouverneur  Morris  ;  and  those  of  Mr. 
Morris  to  the  President,  of  January  22d,  April  7th,  13th,  May 
1st,  29th,  July  3d,  August  16th,  and  September  18th,  referred  to 
him  by  the  President,  makes  the  following  report  thereon  : 

The  President's  letter  of  January  22d,  authorized  Mr.  Morns 
to  enter  into  conference  with  the  British  ministers  in  order  to 
discover  their  sentiments  on  the  following  subjects  : 

1.  Their  retention  of  the  western  posts  contrary  to  the  treaty 
of  peace. 

2.  Indemnification  for  the  negroes  carried  off  against  the  stipu- 
lations of  the  sam"  treaty. 


518  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

3.  A  treaty  for  the  regulation  of  ihe  commerce  between  the 
two  countries. 

4.  The  exchange  of  a  minister. 

The  letters  of  Mr.  Morris  liefore  mentioned,  state  the  commu- 
nications, oral  and  written,  which  have  passed  between  him  and 
the  ministers ;  and  from  these  the  Secretary  of  State  draws  the 
following  inferences  : 

1.  That  the  British  court  is  decided  not  to  surrender  the  posts  in 
any  event ;  and  that  they  will  urge  as  a  pretext  that  though  our 
courts  of  justice  are  now  open  to  British  subjects,  they  were  so 
long  shut  after  the  peace  as  to  have  defeated  irremedially  the 
recovery  of  debts  in  many  cases.  They  suggest,  indeed,  the 
idea  of  an  indemnification  on  our  part.  But  probably  were  we 
disposed  to  admit  their  right  to  indemnification,  they  would  take 
care  to  set  it  so  high  as  to  insure  a  disagreement. 

2.  That  as  to  indemnification  for  the  negroes,  their  measures 
for  concealing  them  were  in  the  first  instance  so  efficacious,  as 
to  reduce  our  demand  for  them,  so  far  as  we  can  support  it  by 
direct  proof,  to  be  very  small  indeed.  Its  smallness  seems  to 
have  kept  it  out  of  discussion.  Were  other  difficulties  removed, 
they  would  probably  make  none  of  this  article. 

3.  That  they  equivocate  on  every  proposal  of  a  treaty  of  com- 
merce, and  authorize  in  their  communications  with  Mr.  Morris 
the  same  conclusions  which  have  been  drawn  from  those  they 
had  had  from  time  to  time  with  Mr.  Adams,  and  those  through 
Mayor  Beckwith  ;  to  wit,  that  they  do  not  rnean  to  submit  their 
present  advantages  in  commerce  to  the  risk  which  might  attend 
a  discussion  of  them,  whereon  some  reciprocity  could  not  fail  to 
1  e  demanded.  Unless,  indeed,  we  woidd  agree  to  make  it  a 
treaty  of  alliance  as  well  as  commerce,  so  as  to  undermine  our 
obligations  witli  France.  This  method  of  stripping  that  rival 
nation  of  its  alliances,  they  tried  successfully  with  Holland,  en- 
deavored at  it  with  Spain,  and  have  plainly  and  repeatedly  sug- 
g  ested  to  us.  For  this  they  would  probably  relax  some  of  the 
rigors  they  exercise  against  our  commerce. 

4.  That  as  to  a  minister,  their  Secretary  for  foreign  affairs  is 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  619 

disposed  to  exchange  one,  but  meets  with  opposition  in  his 
cabinet,  so  as  to  render  the  issue  uncertain. 

From  the  whole  of  which,  the  Secretary  of  State  is  of  opinion 
that  Mr.  Morris'  letters  remove  any  doubts  which  might  have 
been  entertained  as  to  the  intentions  and  dispositions  of  the 
British  cabinet. 

That  it  would  be  dishonorable  to  the  United  States,  useless 
and  even  injurious,  to  renew  the  propositions  for  a  treaty  of  com- 
merce, or  for  the  exchange  of  a  minister ;  and  that  these  subjects 
should  now  remain  dormant,  till  they  shall  be  brought  forward 
earnestly  by  them. 

That  the  demands  of  the  posts,  and  of  indemnification  for  the 
negroes,  should  not  be  again  made  till  we  are  in  readiness  to  do 
ourselves  the  justice  which  may  be  refused. 

That  Mr.  Morris  should  be  informed  that  he  has  fulfilled  the 
object  of  his  agency  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  President,  inasmuch 
as  he  has  enabled  him  to  judge  of  the  real  views  of  the  British 
cabinet,  and  that  it  is  his  pleasure  that  the  matters  coramitted  to 
him  be  left  in  the  situation  in  which  the  letter  shall  find  them. 

That  a  proper  compensation  be  given  to  Mr.  Morris  for  his 
services  herein,  which  having  been  begun  on  the  22d  of  January, 
and  ended  the  18th  of  September,  comprehend  a  space  of  near 
eight  months  ;  that  the  allowance  to  an  agent  may  be  properly 
fixed  anywhere  between  the  half  and  the  whole  of  what  is  allowed 
to  a  Charge  d'affaires  ;  which,  according  to  the  establishment  of 
the  United  States  at  the  time  of  this  appointment,  was  at  the  rate 
of  f  3,000  a  year  ;  consequently,  that  such  a  sum  of  between  one 
and  two  thousand  dollars  be  allowed  him  as  the  President  shall 
deem  proper,  on  a  view  of  the  interference  which  this  agency 
may  have  had  with  Mr.  Morris'  private  pursuits  in  Europe. 


XVIII. — Report  relative  to  the  Mediterranean  trade. 

DeOL-mber    2S,   1790. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred  by  the   House 
of  Representatives  so  much  of  the   speech  of  the  President  of 


520  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

the  United  States  to  both  Houses  of  Congress,  as  relates  to  the 
trade  of  the  United  States  in  the  Mediterranean,  with  instructions 
to  report  thereupon  to  the  House,  has  had  the  same  under  con- 
sideration, and  thereupon  makes  the  following  report  : 

The  loss  of  the  records  of  the  custom  houses  in  several  of  the 
States,  which  took  place  about  the  commencement  and  during 
the  course  of  the  late  war,  has  deprived  us  of  official  informa- 
tion, as  to  the  extent  of  our  commerce  and  navigation  in  the 
Mediterranean  sea.  According  to  the  best  which  may  be  ob- 
tained from  other  sources  meriting  respect,  it  may  be  concluded 
that  about  one-sixth  of  the  wheat  and  flour  exported  from  the 
United  States,  and  about  one-fourth  in  value  of  their  dried  and 
pickled  fish,  and  some  rice,  found  their  best  markets  in  the 
Mediterranean  ports  ;  that  these  articles  constituted  the  principal 
part  of  what  we  sent  into  that  sea ;  that  that  commerce  loaded 
outwards  from  eighty  to  one  hundred  ships,  annually,  of  twenty 
thousand  tons,  navigated  by  about  twelve  hundred  seamen.  It 
was  abandoned  early  in  the  war.  And  after  the  peace  which 
ensued,  it  was  obvious  to  our  merchants,  that  their  adventures 
into  that  sea  would  be  exposed  to  the  depredations  of  the  pirati- 
cal States  on  the  coast  of  Barbary.  Congress,  too,  was  very 
early  attentive  to  this  danger,  and  by  a  commission  of  the  12th 
of  May,  1784,  authorized  certain  persons,  named  ministers  pleni- 
potentiary for  that  purpose,  to  conclude  treaties  of  peace  and 
amity  with  the  Barbary  powers.  And  it  being  afterwards  found 
more  expedient  that  the  negotiations  should  be  carried  on  at  the 
residences  of  those  powers.  Congress,  by  a  farther  commission, 
bearing  date  the  11th  of  March,  1785,  empowered  the  same 
ministers  plenipotentiary  to  appoint  agents  to  repair  to  the  said 
powers  at  their  proper  residences,  and  there  to  negotiate  sncl\ 
treaties.  The  whole  expenses  were  limited  to  eighty  thousand 
dollars.     Agents  were  accordingly  sent  to  Morocco  and  Algiers. 

Before  the  appointment  of  the  one  to  Morocco,  it  was  known 
that  a  cruiser  of  that  State  had  taken  a  vessel  of  the  United 
States ;  and  that  the  emperor,  on  the  friendly  interposition  of 
'Jie  court  of  Madrid  had  liberated  the  crew,  and  made  restitution 


OFFICIAL     PAPERS.  521 

of  the  vessel  and  cargo,  as  far  as  their  condition  admitted  This 
was  a  happy  presage  of  the  liberal  treaty  he  afterwards  conckid- 
ed  with  oar  agent,  still  .under  the  friendly  mediation  of  Spain, 
and  at  an  expense  of  between  nine  and  ten  thousand  dollars 
only.  On  his  death,  which  has  taken  place  not  long  since,  it 
becomes  necessary,  according  to  their  usage,  to  obtain  immediate- 
ly a  recognition  of  the  treaty  by  his  successor,  and  consequently, 
to  make  provision  for  the  expenses  which  may  attend  it.  The 
amount  of  the  former  furnishes  one  ground  of  estimate  ;  Ijut  the 
character  and  dispositions  of  the  successor,  which  are  unknown 
here,  may  influence  it  materially.  The  friendship  of  this  power 
is  important,  because  our  Atlantic  as  well  as  Mediterranean  trade 
is  open  to  his  annoyance,  and  because  we  carry  on  a  useful  com- 
merce with  his  nation. 

The  Algerines  had  also  taken  two  vessels  of  the  United 
States,  with  twenty-one  persons  on  board,  whom  they  retained 
as  slaves.  On  the  arrival  of  the  agent  sent  to  that  regency,  the 
dey  refused  utterly  to  treat  of  peace  on  any  terms,  and  demand- 
ed 59,496  dollars  for  the  ransom  of  our  captives.  This  mission 
therefore  proved  ineffectual. 

While  these  negotiations  were  on  foot  at  Morocco  and  Algiers. 
an  ambassador  from  Tripoli  arrived  m  London.  The  miaisters 
plenipotentiary  of  the  United  States  met  him  in  person.  He  de- 
manded for  the  peace  of  that  State,  thirty  thousand  guineas  ; 
and  undertook  to  engage  that  of  Tunis  for  a  like  sum.  These 
demands  were  beyond  the  limits  of  Congress,  and  of  reason,  and 
nothing  was  done.  Nor  was  it  of  importance,  as,  Algiers  re- 
maining hostile,  the  peace  of  Tunis  and  Tripoli  was  of  no  value, 
and  when  that  of  the  former  should  be  obtained,  theirs  would 
soon  follow. 

Our  navigation,  then,  into  the  Mediterranean,  has  not  been  re- 
surned  at  all  since  the  peace.  The  sole  obstacle  has  been  the 
unprovoked  war  of  Algiers  ;  and  the  sole  remedy  must  be  to 
bring  that  war  to  an  end,  or  to  palliate  its  effects.  Its  effects 
may,  perhaps,  be  palliated  by  insuring  our  ships  and  cargoes  des- 
tined for  that  sea,  and  by  forming  a  convention  "vith  the  regency, 


522  JEFFEESOK'S    WORKS. 

for  the  ransom  of  our  seamen,  according  to  a  fixed  tariff.  That 
tariff  will,  probably,  be  high,  and  the  rate  of  insurance  so  settled, 
in  the  long  run,  .as  to  pay  for  the  vessels  and  cargoes  captured, 
and  something  more.  What  proportion  will  be  captured  nothing 
but  experience  can  determine.  Our  commerce  differs  from  that 
of  most  of  the  nations  with  whom  the  predatory  States  are 
in  habits  of  war.  Theirs  is  spread  all  over  the  face  of  the 
Mediterranean,  and  therefore  must  be  sought  for  all  over  its  face. 
Ours  must  all  enter  at  a  strait  only  five  leagues  wide  ;  so  that 
their  cruisers,  taking  a  safe  and  commanding  position  near  the 
strait's  mouth,  may  very  effectually  inspect  whatever  enters  it. 
So  safe  a  station,  with  a  certainty  of  receiving  for  their  prisoners 
a  good  and  stated  price,  may  tempt  their  cupidity  to  seek  our 
vessels  particularly.  Nor  is  it  certain  that  our  seamen  could  be 
induced  to  engage  in  that  navigation,  though  with  the  security 
of  Algerine  faith  that  they  would  be  liberated  on  the  payment 
of  a  fixed  sum.  The  temporary  deprivation  of  liberty,  perhaps 
chains,  the  danger  of  the  pest,  the  perils  of  the  engagement 
preceding  their  surrender,  and  possible  delays  of  the  ransom, 
might  turn  elsewhere  the  choice  of  men,  to  whom  all  the  rest 
of  the  world  is  open.  In  every  case,  these  would  be  embaiTass- 
ments  which  would  enter  into  the  merchants'  estimate,  and  en- 
danger the  preference  of  foreign  bottoms  not  exposed  to  them. 
And  upon  the  whole,  this  expedient  does  not  fulfil  our  wish  of  a 
complete  re-establishment  of  our  commerce  -in  that  sea. 

A  second  plan  might  be  to  obtain  peace  by  purchasing  it, 
For  this  we  have  the  example  of  rich  and  powerful  nations,  in 
this  instance  counting  their  interest  more  than  their  honor.  If, 
conforming  to  their  example,  we  determine  to  purchase  a  peace, 
it  is  proper  to  inquire  what  a  peace  may  cost.  This  being  mere- 
ly a  matter  of  conjecture,  we  can  only  compare  together  such 
opinions  as  have  been  obtained,  and  from  them  form  one  for 
ourselves. 

Mr.  Wolf,  a  respectable  Irishman,  who  had  resided  very  long 
at  Algiers,  thought  a  peace  might  be  obtained  from  that  regency, 
and  the  redemption  of  our  captives  included,  for  sixty  or  seventy 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  523 

thousand  pounds  sterling.*  His  character  and  opinion  Doth 
merited  respect.  Yet  his  estimate  being  the  lowest  of  all  who 
have  hazarded  an  opinion  on  this  subject,  one  is  apt  to  fear  his 
judgment  might  have  been  biassed  by  the  hope  he  entertained 
that  the  United  States  would  charge  him  with  this  negotiation. 

Captain  O'Brien,  one  of  our  captives,  who  had  been  in  Al- 
giers fom-  years  and  a  half  at  the  date  of  his  last  letter,  a  very 
sensible  man,  and  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  very  minute  in- 
formation, supposes  that  peace  alone,  might  be  bought  for  that 
sum,  that  is  to  say,  for  three  hundred  and  twenty-two  thousand 
dollars. 

The  Tripoline  ambassador,  before  mentioned,  thought  that 
peace  could  be  made  with  the  three-  smaller  powers  for  ninety 
thousand  pounds  sterling,  to  which  were  to  be  added  the  ex- 
penses of  the  mission  and  other  incidental  expenses.  But  he 
could  not  answer  for  Algiers  ;  they  would  demand  more.  The 
ministers  plenipotentiary,  who  conferred  with  him,  had  judged 
that  as  much  must  be  paid  to  Algiers  as  to  the  other  three  pow- 
ers together  ;  and  consequently,  that  according  to  this  measure, 
the  peace  of  Algiers  would  cost  from  an  hundred  to  an  hundred 
and  twenty-five  thousand  pounds  sterling  ;  or  from  four  hundred 
and  sixty  to  five  hundred  and  seventy-five  thousand  dollars. 

The  latter  sum  seemed  to  meet  the  ideas  of  the  Count  de  Ver- 
gennes,  who,  from  a  very  long  residence  at  Constantinople,  was 
a  good  judge  of  what  related  to 'the  porte,  or  its  dependencies. 

A  person  whose  name  is  not  free  to  be  mentioned  here,  a  na- 
tive of  the  continent  of  Europe,  who  had  long  lived,  and  still 
lives  at  Algiers,  with  whom  the  minister  plenipotentiary  of  the 
United  States,  at  Paris,  had  many  and  long  conversations,  and 
found  his  information  full,  clear,  and  consistent,  was  of  opinion 
the  peace  of  Algiers  could  not  be  bought  by  the  United  States 
for  less  than  one  million  of  dollars.  And  when  that  is  paid,  all 
is  not  done.  On  the  death  of  a  dey,  (and  the  present  one  is  be- 
tween seventy  and  eighty  years  of  age,)  respectable  presents 
must  be  made  to  the  successor,  that  he  may  recognize  the  treaty 

*  See  No.  1  accompauying  this  report. 


524  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

and  very  often  he  takes  the  liberty  of  altering  it.  When  a  con- 
sul is  sent  or  changed,  new  presents  must  be  made.  If  these 
events  leave  a  considerable  interval,  occasion  must  be  made  of 
renewing  j)resents.  And  with  all  this  they  must  see  that  we  are 
in  condition  to  chastise  an  infraction  of  the  treaty  ;  consequently 
some  marine  force  must  be  exhibited  in  their  harbor  from  time 
to  time. 

The  late  peace  of  Spain  with  Algiers  is  said  to  have  cost  from 
three  to  five  millions  of  dollars.  Having  received  the  money, 
they  take  the  vessels  of  that  nation  on  the  most  groundless  pre- 
texts ;  counting,  that  the  same  force  which  bound  Spain  to  so 
hard  a  treaty,  may  break  it  with  impunity. 

Their  treaty  with  France',  which  had  expired,  was  about  two 
years  ago  renewed  for  fifty  years.  The  sum  given  at  the  time 
of  renewal  is  not  known.  But  presents  are  to  be  repeated  every 
ten  years,  and  a  tribute  of  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  be 
annually  paid.  Yet  perceiving  that  France,  embarrassed  at 
home  with  her  domestic  affairs,  was  less  capable  of  acting  abroad, 
they  took  six  vessels  of  that  nation  in  the  course  of  the  last  year, 
and  retain  the  captives,  forty-four  in  number,  in  slavery. 

It  is  the  opinion  of  Captain  O'Brien,  that  those  nations  are 
best  treated  who  pay  a  smaller  sum  in  the  beginning,  and  an 
annual  tribute  afterwards.  In  this  way  he  informs  us  that  the 
Dutch,  Danes,  Swedes,  and  Venetians  pay  to  Algiers,  from 
.wenty-four  to  thirty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  each ;  the  two  first 
in  naval  stores,  the  two  last  chiefly  in  money.  It  is  supposed, 
that  the  peace  of  the  Barbary  States  costs  Great  Britain  about 
sixty  thousand  guineas,  or  two  hundred  and  eighty  thousand 
dollars  a  year.  But  it  must  be  noted  that  these  facts  cannot  be 
authentically  advanced  ;  as  from  a  principle  of  self-condemnation, 
the  governments  keep  them  from  from  the  public  eye  as  much 
as  possible. 

Nor  must  we  omit  finally  to  recollect,  that  the  Algerines,  at- 
tentive to  reserve  always  a  sufficient  aliment  for  their  piracies, 
will  never  extend  their  peace  beyond  certain  limits,  and  conse- 


OFFICIAL     PAPERS.  525 

quently,  that  we  may  find  ourselves  in  the  case  Oi  those  nations 
to  whom  they  refuse  peace  at  any  price. 

The  third  expedient  is  to  repel  force  by  force.  Several  state- 
ments are  hereto  annexed  of  the  naval  force  of  Algiers,  taken  in 
1785,  1786,  1787,  1788,  and  1789,  differing  in  small  degrees, 
but  conciu-ring  in  the  main.  Prom  these  it  results  that  they  have 
usually  had  about  nine  chebecs,  from  ten  to  thirty-six  guns,  and 
four  galleys,  which  have  been  reduced  by  losses  to  six  chebecs 
and  four  galleys.  They  have  a  forty-gun  frigate  on  the  stocks, 
and  expect  two  cruisers  from  the  grand  seignior.  The  character 
of  their  vessels  is,  that  they  are  sharp  built  and  swift,  but  so  light 
as  not  to  stand  the  broadside  of  a  good  frigate.  Their  guns  are 
of  different  calibres,  unskilfully  pointed  and  worked.  The  ves- 
sels illy  manoeuvred,  but  crowded  with  men,  one  third  Turks,  the 
rest  Moors,  of  determined  hravery,  and  resting  their  sole  hopes 
on  boarding.  But  two  of  these  vessels  belong  to  the  govern- 
ment, the  rest  being  private  property.  If  they  come  out  of  the 
harbor  together,  they  separate  immediately  in  quest  of  prey ;  and 
it  is  said  they  were  never  known  to  act  together  in  any  instance. 
Nor  do  they  come  out  at  all,  when  they  know  there  are  vessels 
cruising  for  them.  They  perform  three  cruises  a  year,  between 
the  middle  of  April  and  November,  when  they  unrig  and  lay  up 
for  the  winter.  When  not  confined  within  the  straits,  they  rove 
northwardly  to  the  channel,  and  westwardly  to  the  westward 
islands. 

They  are  at  peace  at  present,  with  France,  Spain,  England, 
Venice,  the  United  Netherlands,  Sweden,  and  Denmark  ;  and  at 
war  with  Russia,  Austria,  Portugal,  Naples,  Sardinia,  Genoa,  and 
Malta. 

Should  the  United  States  propose  to  vindicate  their  commerce 
by  arms,  they  would,  perhaps,  think  it  prudent  to  possess  a  force 
equal  to  the  whole  of  that  which  may  be  opposed  to  them. 
What  that  equal  force  would  be,  will  belong  to  another  depart- 
ment to  say. 

At  the  same  time  it  might  never  be  necessary  to  draw  out  tne 
whole  at  once,  nor  perhaps  any  proportion  of  it,  but  foi  a  small 


526  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

part  of  the  year ;  as  it  is  reasonable  to  presume  that  a  concert  of 
operation  might  be  arranged  among  the  powers  at  war  with  the 
Barbary  States,  so  as  that,  each  performing  a  tour  of  given  dura- 
tion, and  in  given  order,  a  constant  cruise  during  the  eight  tem- 
perate months  of  every  year,  may  be  kept  up  before  the  harbor 
of  J^lgiers,  till  the  object  of  such  operations  be  completely  ob- 
tained. Portugal  has  singly,  for  several  years  past,  kept  up  such 
a  cruise  before  the  straits  of  Gibraltar,  and  by  that  means  has 
confined  the  Algerines  closely  within.  But  two  of  their  vessels 
have  been  oat  of  the  straits  in  the  last  five  years.  Should  Por- 
tugal effect  a  peace  with  them,  as  has  been  apprehended  for  some 
time,  the  Atlantic  will  immediately  become  the  principal  scene 
of  their  piracies ;  their  peace  with  Spain  having  reduced  the 
profits  of  their  Mediterranean  cruises  below  the  expenses  of 
equipment. 

Upon  the  whole,  it  rests  with  Congress  to  decide  between 
war,  tribute,  and  ransom,  as  the  means  of  re-establishing  our 
Mediterranean  commerce.  If  war,  they  will  consider  how  far 
our  own  resources  shall  be  called  forth,  and  how  far  they  will 
enable  the  Executive  to  engage,  in  the  forms  of  the  constitution, 
the  co-operation  of  other  powers.  If  tribute  or  ransom,  it  will 
rest  with  them  to  limit  and  provide  the  amount  ;  and  with  the 
Executive,  observing  the  same  constitutional  forms,  to  take  ar- 
rangements for  employing  it  to  the  best  advantage. 

No.  1. — Extract  of  a  letter  from  Richard  O'Brien,  one  of  the  American  captives  at 
Algiers,  to  Congress.     Algiers,  December  26,  1789. 

"  It  was  the  opinion  of  Mr.  John  Wolf,  who  resided  many  years  in  this  city, 
that  the  United  States  of  America  may  obtain  a  peaee  for  one  hundred  years  with 
this  legency,  for  the  sum  of  sixty  or  seventy  thousand  pounds  sterling,  and  the 
redemption  of  fifteen  Americans  included.  Mr.  Wolf  was  the  British  charge  det 
affaires  in  Algiers,  and  was  much  the  friend  of  America,  but  he  is  no  more. 

"I  have  now  been  four  years  and  a  half'in  captivity,  and  I  have  much  reason 
to  think,  that  America  may  obtaiu  a  peace  with  Algiers  for  the  sum  of  sixty-five 
or  seventy  thousand  pounds,  considering  the  present  state  of  Algiers.  That  this 
regency  would  find  it  their  interest  to  take  two  or  three  American  cruisers  in 
part  payment  for  making  »  peace ;  and  also  would  take  masts,  yards,  plank, 
scautling,  tar,  pitch,  and  turpeatine,  and  Philadelphia  iron,  as  a  part  payment; 
ill  to  be  regulated  at  a  certain  fixed  price  by  treaty." 


OEFICIAL    PAPERS.  527 

N'o.  1.— Extract  of  a  letter  from  the  Honorable  John  Adams,  Minister  Plenipotentiary 
for  the  United  States  at  Londnn,  to  the  Honorable  John  Jay,  Secretary  for  Foreign 
Affairs.     London,  February  2'z,  1786. 

"On  Monday  evening  another  conference  was  held  with  the  Tripolitan  am- 
bassador. When  he  began  to  explain  himself  concerning  his  demands,  he  said 
they  would  be  different  according  to  the  duration  of  the  treaty.  If  that  were 
perpetual,  they  would  be  greater ;  if  for  a  term  of  years,  less  ;  his  advice  was  that 
it  should  be  perpetual.  Once  signed  by  the  bashaw,  dey,  and  other  officers,  it 
would  be  indissoluble  and  binding  forever  upon  all  their  successors.  But  if  « 
temporary  treaty  were  made,  it  might  be  difficult  and  expensive  to  revive  it. 
For  a  perpetual  treaty,  such  as  they  now  had  with  Spain,  a  sum  of  thirty  thou- 
sand guineas  must  be  paid  upon  the  delivery  of  the  articles  signed  by  the 
dey  and  other  officers.  If  it  were  agreed  to,  lie  would  send  his  secretary 
by  land  to  Marseilles,  and  from  thence,  by  water,  to  Tripoli,  who  should 
bring  it  back  by  the  same  route,  signed  by  the  dey,  <fec.  He  had  proposed 
§0  small  a  sum  in  consideration  of  the  ciroumstanees,  but .  declared  it  was 
not  half  of  what  had  been  lately  paid  them  by  Spain.  If  we  chose  to  treat 
upon  a  different  plan,  he  would  make  a  treaty  perpetual  upon  the  payment  of 
twelve  thousand  five  hundred  guineas  for  the  first  year,  and  three  thousand 
guineas  annually,  until  the  thirty  thousand  guineas  were  paid.  It  was  observed 
that  these  were  large  sums,  and  vastly  beyond  expectation  ;  but  his  excellency 
answered,  that  they  never  made  a  treaty  for  less.  Upon  the  arrival  of  a  prize, 
She  dey  and  other  officers  are  entitled,  by  their  laws,  to  large  shares,  by  which 
they  might  make  greater  profits  than  those  sums  amounted  to,  and  they  never 
would  give  up  this  advantage  for  less. 

"  He  was  told,  that  although  there  was  full  power  to  treat,  the  American  min- 
isters were  limited  to  a  much  smaller  sura ;  so  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  do 
anything  until  we  wrote  to  Congress  and  know  their  pleasure.  Colonel  Smith 
was  present  at  this,  as  he  had  been  at  the  last  conference,  and  agreed  to  go  to 
Paris,  to  communicate  all  to  Mr.  Jefferson,  and  persuade  him  to  come  here,  that 
we  may  join  in  farther  conferences,  and  transmit  the  result  to  Congress. 

"The  ambassador  believed  that  Tunis  and  Morocco  would  treat  upon  the  same 
terms,  but  could  not  answer  for  Algiers.  They  would  demand  more.  When  Mr. 
Jefferson  arrives,  we  shall  insist  upon  knowing  the  ultimatum,  and  transmit  it  to 
Congress. 

"Congress  will  perceive  that  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  guineas  will  be 
indispensable  to  conclude  with  the  four  powers  at  this  rate,  besides  a  present  to 
the  ambassadors,  and  their  incidental  charges.  Besides  this,  a  present  of  fire 
hundred  guineas  is  made,  upou  the  arrival  of  a  consul  iu  each  State.  So  man 
wishes  more  fervently  that  the  expense  could  be  less,  but  the  fact  cannot  be  alter- 
ed, and  the  truth  ought  not  to  be  concealed. 

"It  may  be  reasonably  concluded  that  this  great  affair  cannot  be  finished  for 
much  less  than  two  hundred  thousand  pounds  sterling." 


528  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Ko.  3. — Extract  of  a  Letter  from  the  Sonorahle  Thomas  Jefferson,  Ministrr  Plemp» 
tentiaryfor  the  United  States  at  Paris,  to  the  Honor alle  John  Jay,  Secretary  for 
Foreiqn  Affairs.     Paris,  May  23,  1786. 

"  Letters  received  both  from  Madrid  and  Algiers,  while  I  was  in  London,  hav- 
ing suggested  that  treaties  with  the  States  of  Barbary  would  be  much  facilitated 
by  a  previous  one  with  the  Ottoman  Porte,  it  was  agreed  between  Air.  Adams 
and  myself,  that  on  my  return  I  should  consult,  on  this  subject,  the  Count  De 
Vergennes,  whose  long  residence  at  Constantinople  rendered  him  the  best  judge 
of  its  expediency.  Various  circumstances  have  put  it  out  of  my  power  to  consult 
him  till  to-day.  I  stated  to  him  the  difficulties  we  were  likely  to  meet  with  at 
Algiers,  and  asked  his  opinion,  what  would  be  the  probable  expense  of  a  diplo- 
matic mission  to  Constantinople,  and  what  its  effects  at  Algiers.  He  said  that 
the  expense  would  be  very  great ;  for  that  presents  must  be  made  at  that  court, 
and  every  one  would  be  gaping  after  them ;  and  that  it  would  not  procure  us  a 
peace  at  Algiers  one  penny  the  cheaper.  He  observed  that  the  Barbary  States 
acknowledged  a  sort  of  vassalage  to  the  Porte,  and  availed  themselves  of  that  rela- 
tion when  anything  was  to  be  gained  by  it;  but  that  whenever  it  subjected  them 
to  the  demand  from  the  Porte,  they  totally  disregarded  it;  that  money  was  the 
sole  agent.  He  .cited  the  present  example  of  Spain,  which,  though  having  a 
treaty  with  the  Porte,  would  probably  be  obliged  to  buy  a  peace  at  Algiers,  a1 
the  expense  of  upwards  of  six  millions  of  livres.  I  told  him  we  had  calculated, 
from  the  demands  and  information  of  the  Tripoline  ambassador  at  London,  that 
to  make  peace  with  the  four  Barbary  States  would  cost  us  between  two  and  three 
hundred  thousand  guineas,  if  bought  "with  money. 

"The  sum  did  not  seem  to  exceed  his  expectations.  I  mentioned  to  him,  that 
considering  the  uncertainty  of  a  peace,  when  bought,  perhaps  Congress  might 
think  it  more  eligible  to  establish  a  cruise  of  frigates  in  the  Mediterranean,  and 
even  blockade  Algiers.  He  supposed  it  would  require  ten  vessels,  great  and 
small.  I  observed  to  him  that  M.  De  Massiae  had  formerly  done  it  with  five ;  he 
said  it  was  true,  but  that  vessels  of  relief  would  be  necessary.  I  hinted  to  him 
that  I  thought  the  English  capable  of  administering  aid  to  the  Algerines.  He 
seemed  to  think  it  impossible,  on  account  of  the  scandal  it  would  bring  on  them. 
I  asked  him  what  had  occasioned  the  blockade  by  M.  De  Massiac,  he  said  an  in 
fraction  of  their  treaty  by  the  Algerines." 

No.  4. — Extract  of  a  Letter  frmn  Richard  O'Brien  to  the  Hon.  Thomas  Jefferson. 
Algiers,  April  28,  178'7. 

■  "It  seems  the  Neapolitan  ambassador  had  obtained  a  truce  with  this  regency 
for  three  months;  and  th'e  ambassador  wrote  his  court  of  his  success;  but  about 
the  1st  of  April,  when  the  cruisers  were  fitting  out,  the  ambassador  went  to  the 
dey,  and  hoped  the  dey  would  give  the  necessary  orders  to  the  captains  of  his 
cruisers  not  to  take  the  Neapolitan  vessels.  The  dey  said  the  meaning  of  the 
truce  was  not  to  take  the  Neapolitan  cruisers,  but  if  his  chebecks  should  meet  the 
Neapolitan  merchantmen  to  take  them  and  send  them  for  Algiers.  The  ambassa- 
dor said,  the  Neapolitan  cruisers  would  not  want  a  pass  on  those  terms.  The  dey 
said,  if  his  chebecks  should  meet  either  men  of  war  or  merchant  vessels,  to  take 


OFFICIAL     PAPERS.  529 

them ;  so  gave  orders  accordingly.  The  Algerines  sailed  the  9th  instant,  and  are 
gone,  I  believe,  off  the  coast  of  Italy.  This  shows  there  is  very  little  confidence 
to  be  put  in  the  royal  word.  No  principle  of  national  honor  will  bind  those  peo- 
ple; and  I  believe  not  much  confidence  to  be  put  in  them  in  treaties.  The  Alger- 
ines are  not  inclinable  to  a  peace  with  the  Neapolitans.  I  hear  of  no  negotiation. 
When  the  two  frigates  arrive  with  the  money  for  the  ransom  of  the  slaves,  I  be- 
lieve they  are  done  with  the  Neapolitans." 

Extract  of  a  Letter  from  Richard  O'Brien  to  the  Hon.  Thonxas  Jefferson.     Algiers, 

June  13,  1789. 

"  The  cruisers  had  orders  to  take  the  Danes ;  but  I  believe  Denmark,  suspect- 
ing that  on  account  of  their  alliance  with  Russia,  that  the  grand  seignior  would 
order  the  regency  of  Algiers  to  make  war  against  the  Danes;  accordingly,  the 
Danes  have  evacuated  the  Mediterranean  seas,  until  the  affairs  of  Europe  are 
more  settled.  The  Danish  ship  with  the  tribute  is  shortly  expected.  She  is 
worth  fifty  thousand  dollars ;  so  that  the  Algerines  will  not  make  known  public- 
ly their  intention  of  breaking  with  Denmark,  until  this  ship  arrives  with  the 
tribute.  I  am  very  sure  that  Mr.  Eobindar  is  very  sensible  of  the  intention  of 
those  sea-robbers,  the  terror  and  scourge  of  the  Christians.  The.  reason  the  Al- 
gerines have  not  committed  any  depredations  on  the  English,  is,  that  the  cruisers 
have  not  met  with  any  of  them  richly  loaded ;  for  if  they  had  met  a  rich  ship  from 
London  for  Livorna,  they  would  certainly  have  brought  her  into  port,  and  said 
that  such  ship  was  loaded  for  the  enemy  of  Algiers  at  Livorna ;  but  if  that  was 
not  a  sufficient  excuse,  hove  overboard  or  dipt  the  pass. 

"  Consul  Logic  has  been  treated  with  much  contempt  by  the  Algerine  ministry ; 
and  you  may  depend,  that  when  the  dey  goes  to  his  long  home,  that  his  successor 
will  not  renew  the  peace  with  Great  Britain,  without  a  large  sum  of  money  is 
paid,  and  very  valuable  presents.  This  I  well  know ;  the  whole  ministry  says, 
that  the  peace  with  the  English  is  very  old,  and  that  the  English  T-ust  conform  to 
the  custom  of  other  nations,  in  giving  the  government  here  money  and  presents. 
In  fact,  the  Algerines  are  trying  their  endeavors  to  find  some  nation  to  break  the 
peace  with  them.  I  think,  if  they  had  treated  the  English  in  such  a  manner  as 
they  have  the  French,  that  the  English  would  resent  it." 

Extract  of  a  Letter  from  Richard  O'Brien  to  the  Hon.  Thomas  Jefferson.     Algiers, 

June  13,  1789. 
"What  dependence  or  faith  could  be  given  to  a  peace  with  the  Algerines,  con- 
sidering their  present  haughtiness,  and  with  what  contempt  and  derision  do  they 
treat  all  nations ;  so  that,  in  my  opinion,  until  the  Algerines  more  strictly  adhere 
to  the  treaties  they  have  already  made,  it  would  be  impolitic  in  any  nation  to  try 
to  make  a  peace  here ;  for  I  see  they  take  more  from  the  nations  they  are  at  peace 
with,  than  from  those  they  are  at  declared  war  with.  The  Portuguese,  I  hope, 
•will  keep  the  Algerines  inside  the  straits  ;  for  only  consider  the  bad  consequence 
of  the  Algerines  going  into  the  mar  Grandi.  Should  the  Portuguese  make  a  sud- 
den peace  with  this  regency,  the  Algerines  would  immediately  go  out  of  the 
straits,  and  of  course,  take  many  an  American." 
VOL.  VII.  34 


530  JEFFERSON'S    TVORKS. 

No.  S. — Extract  of  a  Letter  from  the  Hon.  John  Adams.  Esq.,  Minister  Plenipoten- 
tiary  of  the  United  States  at  the  Court  of  Great  Britain,  to  the  Hon.  John  Jay,  Esq., 
Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs.     February  16,  1786. 

"  The  American  commerce  can  be  protected  from  these  Africans  only  by  nego- 
tiation, or  by  -war.  If  presents  should  be  exacted  from  us,  as  ample  as  those 
which  are  given  by  England,  the  expense  may  amount  to  sixty  thousand  pounds 
sterling  a  year,  an  enormous  sum  to  be  sure ;  but  infinitely  less  than  the  expense 
of  fighting.  Two  frigates  of  30  guns  each  would  cost  as  much  to  fit  them  for  the 
sea,  besides  the  accumulating  charges  of  stores,  provisions,  pay,  and  clothing. 
The  powers  of  Europe  generally  send  a  squadron  of  men  of  war  with  their  minis- 
ters, and  offer  battle  at  the  same  time  that  they  propose  treaties  and  promise 
presents." 

No.  6. — Several  statements  of  the  Marine  force  of  Algiers. — Public  and  private. 
May  20,  1786. — Mr.  Lamb  says  it  consists  of 
9  Chebecs  i  from  36  to  8  guns;  manned,  the  largest  with  400  men,  and  so 

10  Row  Galleys  fin  proportion. 

May  27,  1787. — Mr.  Randall  furnishes  two  statements,  viz. : 
A  tnore  general  one — ^1  Setye  of  34  guns. 
2     "         "   32      " 
1     "         "   26      " 
1     "         "   24      " 
1  Chebeo     20      " 
1     "         "   18      " 
1     "         "   10      " 
T 
4  half-galleys,  carrying  from  1'20  to  130  Moors. 
3  galliots  of  70,  60,  and  50  Moors. 

A  more  particular  one  as  follows  : 

1  of  32  guns,  viz.  2  eighteens,  24  nines,  6  fours,  and  450  mea. 


1  of  28      " 

2  twelves. 

24      " 

2  sixes, 

"     400 

1  of  24      " 

20  fours, 

"     350 

1  of  20      " 

20  sixes. 

"     300 

2  of  18       " 

18      " 

"     260 

1  of  16      " 

16      " 

"     250 

2  small  craft. 

55  gun-boats,  carrying  1  twelve  pounder  each,  for  defence  of  the  harbor. 

June  8,  1786. — A  letter  from  the  three  American  captains,  O'Brien,  Coffin,  an^ 
Stephens,  state  them  as    1  of  82 

1  of  30 
3  of  24 

8  of  18 
J_of  12 

9  and  66  gun-boats. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  531 

September  26  l^SY.— Captain  O'Brien  furnishes  the  ToUowing  statement  ■ 
1  of  30  guns,  400  men,  106  feet  length,  straight  keel. 


1  of  26 

U 

320 

(( 

96 

2  of  22 

(( 

240 

« 

80 

1  of  22 

t( 

240 

(( 

75 

1  of  22 

tt 

240 

U 

70 

1  of  18 

t 

200 

" 

70 

1   of  16 

(( 

180 

n 

64 

1  of  12 

(C 

150 

tl 

60 

9 

Galleys 

1  of    4 

n 

70 

t( 

40 

2  of    2 

(( 

46 

ti 

32 

1  of    2 

11 

40 

ii 

32 

February  6,  1788. — Statement  by  the  inhabitants  of  Algiers,  spoken  of  in  the 
report. 

9  vessels  from  36  down  to  20  guns. 

4  or  5  smaller. 
About  this  date  the  Algerines  lost  two  or  three  vessels,  stranded  or  taken. 

December,  1789. — Captain  O'Brien  furnishes  the  latest  statement. 
1  ship  of  24  guns,  received  lately  from  France. 
6  large  cruisers. 

6  3  galleys,  and  60  gun-boats. 

In  the  fall  of  1789,  they  laid  the  keel  of  a  40  gun  frigate,  and  they  expect  two 
cruisers  from  the  grand  seignior. 

No.  7. — Translation  of  a  Letter  from  Count  D'Mstaing  to  the  Hon.  Thomas  Jefferson, 
Esq.     Paris,  May  17,  1784. 

Sir, — In  gi\'ing  you  an  account  of  an  opinion  of  Mr.  Massiac,  and  which  abso- 
lutely corresponds  with  my  own,  I  cannot  too  much  observe  how  great  a  differ- 
ence may  take  place  in  the  course  of  forty  years  between  the  means  which  he  re- 
quired and  those  which  political  circumstances,  that  I  cannot  ascertain,  may 
exact. 

This  Secretary  of  State,  afterwards  vice-Admiral,  had  the  modesty,  when  a  cap- 
tain, to  propose  a  means  for  the  reduction  of  Algiers,  less  brilliant  to  himself,  but 
more  sure  and  economical  than  the  one  government  was  about  to  adopt.  They 
wanted  him  to  undertake  a  bombardment;  he  proposed  a  simple  blockade.  All 
the  force  he  requested  was  a  single  man-of-war,  two  strong  frigates,  and  two 
sloops-of-war. 

I  am  convinced,  that  by  blocking  up  Algiers  by  cross-anchoring,  and  with  a 
long  tow,  that  is  to  say,  with  several  cables  spliced  to  each  other,  and  with  iron 
chains,  one  might,  if  necessary,  always  remain  there,  and  there  is  no  Barbariai 
power  thus  confined,  which  would  not  sue  for  peace. 


532  JEFFERSON'S    "WORKS. 

During  the  war  before  last  the  English  remained,  even  in  winter,  at  anchor  be- 
fore Morbian,  on  the  coast  of  Brittany,  which  is  a  much  more  dangerous  coast. 
Expeditious  preparation  for  sailing  of  the  vessels  which  form  the  blockade,  which 
should  be  of  a  sufficient  number  to  prevent  anything  from  entering  or  going  out, 
while  the  rest  remain  at  their  stations,  the  choice  of  these  stations,  skilful  manoeu- 
vres, strict  watch  during  the  night,  every  precaution  against  the  element  which 
every  seaman  ought  to  be  acquainted  with ;  also,  against  the  enemy  to  prevent 
the  sudden  attack  of  boats,  and  to  repel  them  in  case  they  should  make  an  attack 
by  boats  prepared  for  the  purpose,  frequent  refreshments  for  the  crews,  reliev- 
ing the  men,  an  unshaken  constancy  and  exactness  in  service,  are  the  means, 
which  in  my  opinion,  would  render  the  event  indubitable.  Bombardments  are 
but  transitory.  It  is,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  like  breaking  glass  windows 
with  guineas.  None  have  produced  effect  against  the  barbarians.  Even  an  im- 
perfect blockade,  were  one  to  have  the  patience  and  courage  to  persist  therein, 
would  occasion  a  perpetual  evil,  it  would  be  insupportable  in  the  long  run.  To 
obtain  the  end  proposed  no  advantage  ought  to  be  lost.  If  several  powers  would 
come  to  a  good  understanding,  and  pursue  a  plan  formed  on  the  principles  of 
humanity ;  if  they  were  not  counteracted  by  others,  it  would  require  but  a  few 
years  to  compel  the  barbarians  to  cease  being  pirates;  they  would  become  mer- 
chants in  spite  of  themselves.  It  is  needless  to  observe,  that  the  unsuccessful  at 
tempts  of  Spain,  and  those  under  which  the  republic  of  Venice,  perhaps,  hides 
other  views,  have  increased  the  strength  as  well  as  the  self-love  of  all  the  barba-' 
rians.  We  are  assured  that  the  Algerines  have  fitted  out  merchantmen  with 
heavy  cannon.  This  would  render  it  necessary  to  block  the  place  with  two 
ships,  so  that  one  of  the  two  might  remain  moored  near  the  bar,  while  the  other 
might  prepare  to  support  such  of  the  frigates  as  should  give  chase.  But  their 
ohebees,  even  their  frigates,  and  all  their  vessels,  although  overcharged  with  men, 
are  moreover  so  badly  armed  and  manoeuvred  that  assistance  from  without 
would  be  most  to  be  feared. 

Your  excellency  has  told  me  the  only  true  means  of  bringing  to  terms  the  only 
people  who  can  take  a  pleasure  in  disturbing  our  commerce.  You  see,  I  speak 
as  an  American  citizen ;  this  title,  dear  to  my  heart,  the  value  of  which  I  justly 
prize,  affords  me  the  happy  opportunity  of  offering,  still  more  particularly,  the 
homage,  the  sincere  attachment,  and  the   respect  with  which  I  have  the  honor 

to  be,  &C.  ESTAINQ. 


XIX. — Report  on  the  Algerine  Prisoners. 

December  28,  1790. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  having  had  under  consideration  the 
situation  of  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  in  captivity  at  Al- 
giers, makes  the  following  report  thereupon  to  the  President  of 
the  United  States : 


OFFIOIAL    PAPERS.  533 

When  the  House  of  Representatives,  at  their  late  session,  were 
pleased  to  refer  to  the  Secretary  of  State,  the  petition  of  our  citi- 
zens in  captivity  at  Algiers,  there  still  existed  some  expectatior 
that  certain  measures,  which  had  been  employed  to  eflFect  then 
redemption,  the  success  of  which  depended  on  their  secrecy 
might  prove  effectual.  Information  received  during  the  recess 
of  Congress  has  so  far  weakened  those  expectations,  as  to  make 
it  now  a  duty  to  lay  before  the  President  of  the  United  States,  n 
full  statement  of  what  has  been  attempted  for  the  relief  of  these 
our  suffering  citizens,  as  well  before,  as  since  he  came  iuto  office, 
that  he  may  be  enabled  to  decide  what  further  is  to  be  done. 

On  the  25th  of  July,  1785,  the  schooner  Maria,  Captain  Ste- 
vens, belonging  to  a  Mr.  Poster,  of  Boston,  was  taken  off  Cape 
St.  Vincents,  by  an  Algerine  corsair  ;  and,  five  days  afterwards, 
the  ship  Dauphin,  Captain  O'Brien,  belonging  to  Messieurs  Irvins 
of  Philadelphia,  was  taken  by  another  Algerine,  about  fifty  leagues 
■tt'estward  of  Lisbon.  These  vessels,  with  their  cargoes  and 
crews,  twenty-one  persons  in  number,  were  carried  into  Algiers. 

Congress  had  some  time  before  commissioned  ministers  pleni- 
potentiary for  entering  into  treaties  of  amity  and  commerce  with 
the  Barbary  Powers,  and  to  send  to  them  proper  agents  for  pre- 
paring such  treaties.  An  agent  was  accordingly  appointed  for 
Algiers,  and  his  instructions  prepared,  when  the  Ministers  Pleni- 
potentiary received  information  of  these  captures.  Though  the 
ransom  of  captives  was  not  among  the  objects  expressed  in  their 
commissions,  because  at  their  dates  the  case  did  not  exist,  yet 
they  thought  it  their  duty  to  undertake  that  ransom,  fearing  that 
the  captives  might  be  sold  and  dispersed  through  the  interior  and 
distant  countries  of  Africa,  if  the  previous  orders  of  Congress 
should  be  waited  for.  They  therefore  added  a  supplementary 
instruction  to  the  agent  to  negotiate  their  ransom.  But,  while 
acting  thus  without  authority,  they  thought  themselves  bound  to 
offer  a  price  so  moderate  as  not  to  be  disapproved.  They  there- 
fore restrained  him  to  two  -hundred  dollars  a  man  ;  which  was 
soniething  less  than  had  been  just  before  paid  for  about  three 
hundred  French  captives,  by  the  Mathurins,  a  religious  order  of 


534  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Prance,  instituted  in  ancient  times  for  the  redemption  of  Chris- 
tian captives  from  the  infidel  Powers.  On  the  arrival  of  the 
agent  at  Algiers,  the  dey  demanded  fifty-nine  thousand  four 
hundred  and  ninety-six  dollars  for  the  twenty-one  captives,  and 
could  be  brought  to  abate  but  little  from  that  demand.  The 
agent,  therefore,  returned  in  1786,  without  having  effected  either 
peace  or  ransom. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  next  year,  1787,  the  Minister  Pleni- 
potentiary of  the  United  States  at  Paris  procured  an  interview 
with  the  general  of  the  religious  order  of  Mathurins,  before  men- 
tioned, to  engage  him  to  lend  his  agency,  at  the  expense  of  the 
United  States,  for  the  redemption  of  their  captive  citizens.  He 
proffered  at  once  all  the  services  he  could  render,  with  the  liber- 
ality and  the  zeal  which  distinguish  his  character.  He  ob- 
served, that  he  had  agents  on  the  spot,  constantly  employed  in 
seeking  out  and  redeeming  the  captives  of  their  own  country ; 
that  these  should  act  for  us,  as  for  themselves ;  that  nothing  could 
be  accepted  for  their  agency ;  and  that  he  would  only  expect 
that  the  price  of  redemption  should  be  ready  on  our  part,  so  as  to 
cover  the  engagement  into  which  he  should  enter.  He  added, 
that,  by  the  time  all  expenses  were  paid,  their  last  redemption 
had  amounted  to  near  two  thousand  five  hundred  livres  a  man, 
and  that  he  could  by  no  means  flatter  us  that  they  could  redeem 
our  captives  as  cheap  as  their  own.  The  pirates  would  take  ad- 
vantage of  its  being  out  of  their  ordinary  line.  Still  he  was  in 
hopes  they  would  not  be  much  higher. 

The  proposition  was  then  submitted  to  Congress,  that  is  to 
say,  in  February,  1787,  and  on  the  19th  of  September,  in  the 
same  year,  their  Minister  Plenipotentiary  at  Paris  received  their 
orders  to  embrace  the  offers  of  the  Mathurins.  This  he  imme- 
diately notified  to  the  general,  observing,  however,  that  he  did 
not  desire  him  to  enter  into  any  engagements  till  a  sufiicient 
sum  to  cotrer  them  should  be  actually  deposited  in  Paris.  The 
general  wished  that  the  whole  might- be  kept  rigorously  secret, 
as,  should  the  barbarians  suspect  him  to  be  acting  for  the  United 
States,  they  would  demand  such  sums  as  he  could  never  agree 


OFFICIAL     PAPERS.  535 

to  give,  even  with  our  consent,  because  it  would  injure  his  future 
purchases  from  them.  He  said  he  had  information  from  his 
agent  at  Algiers,  that  our  captives  received  so  liberal  a  daily  al- 
lowance as  to  evince  that  it  came  from  a  public  source.  He  \ec- 
otnmended  that  this  should  be  discontinued ;  engaging  that  he 
would  have  an  allowance  administered  to  them,  much  short  in- 
deed of  what  they  had  hitherto  received,  but  such  as  was  giren 
to  his  own  countrymen,  quite  sufficient  for  physical  necessities, 
and  more  likely  to  prepare  the  opinion,  that  as  they  were  sub- 
sisted by  his  charity,  they  were  to  be  redeemed  by  it  also.  These 
ideas,  suggested  to  him  by  the  danger  of  raising  his  market,  were 
approved  by  the  Minister  Plenipotentiary  ;  because,  this  being 
the  first  instance  of  a  redemption  by  the  United  States,  it  would 
form  a  precedent,  because  a  high  price  given  by  us  might  induce 
these  pirates  to  abandon  all  other  nations  in  pursuit  of  Ameri- 
cans ;  whereas,  the  contrary  would  take  place,  could  oar  price 
of  redemption  be  fixed  at  the  lowest  point. 

To  destroy,  therefore,  every  expectation  of  a  redemption  by 
the  United  States,  the  bills  of  the  Spanish  consul  at  Algiers,  who 
had  made  the  kind  advances  before  spoken  of  for  the  sustenance 
of  our  captives,  were  not  answered.  On  the  contrary,  a  hint  was 
given  that  these  advances  had  better  be  discontinued,  as  it  was 
not  known  that  they  would  be  reimbursed.  It  was  necessary 
even  to  go  further,  and  to  sufier  the  captives  themselves  and 
their  friends  to  believe  for  awhile,  that  no  attention  was  paid 
to  them,  no  notice  taken  of  their  letters.  They  are  still  under 
this  impression.  It  would  have  been  unsafe  to  trust  them  with 
a  secret,  the  disclosure  of  which  might  forever  prevent  their  re- 
demption, by  raising  the  demands  of  the  captors  to  sums  which 
a  due  regard  for  our  seamen,  still  in  freedom,  would  forbid  us  to 
give.  This  was  the  most  trying  of  all  circumstances,  and  drew 
from  them  the  most  afflicting  reproaches. 

It  was  a  twelvemonth  afterwards  before  the  money  could  be 
deposited  in  Paris,  and  the  negotiation  be  actually  put  into  train. 
In  the  meantime  the  general  had  received  information  from  Al- 
giers of  a  very  considerable  change  of  prices  there.     Within  the 


536  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Jast  two  or  three  years  the  Spaniards,  the  Neapolitanb,  and  the 
Russians,  had  redeemed  at  exorbitant  sums.  Slaves  were  become 
scarce,  and  would  hardly  be  sold  at  any  price.  Still  he  entered 
on  the  business  with  an  assurance  of  doing  the  best  in  his  power ; 
and  he  was  authorized  to  offer  as  far  as  three  thousand  livres,  or 
five  hundred  and  fifty-five  dollars  a  man.  He  wrote  immediately 
to  consult  a  confidential  agent  at  Marseilles,  on  the  best  mode 
of  carrying  this  business  into  effect ;  from  whom  he  received  the 
answer  No.  2,  hereto  annexed. 

Nothing  further  was  known  of  his  progress  or  prospects,  when 
the  House  of  Representatives  were  pleased,  at  their  last  session, 
to  refer  the  petition  of  our  captives  at  Algiers  to  the  Secretary 
of  State.  The  preceding  narrative  shows  that  no  report  could 
have  then  been  made  without  risking  the  object,  of  which  some 
hopes  were  still  entertained.  Later  advices,  however,  from  the 
charge  des  affaires  of  the  United  States,  at  Paris,  informs  us,  that 
these  measures,  though  not  yet  desperate,  are  not  to  be  counted 
on.  Besides  the  exorbitance  of  price,  before  feared,  the  late 
transfer  of  the  lands  and  revenues  of  the  clergy  in  France  to  the 
public,  by  withdrawing  the  means,  seems  to  have  suspended  the 
proceedings  of  the  Mathurins  in  the  purposes  of  their  institution. 

It  is  time,  therefore,  to  look  about  for  something  more  prom- 
ising, without  relinquishing,  in  the  meanwhile,  the  chance  of 
success  through  them.  Endeavors  to  collect  information,  which 
have  been  continued  a  considerable  time,  as  to  the  ransoms  which 
would  probably  be  demanded  from  us,  and  those  actually  paid 
by  other  nations,  enable  the  Secretary  of  State  to  lay  before  the 
President  the  following  short  view,  collected  from  original  papers 
now  in  his  possession,  or  from  information  delivered  to  him  per- 
sonally. Passing  over  the  ransoms  of  the  Mathurins,  which  are 
kept  far  below  the  common  level  by  special  circumstances : 

In  1786,  the  dey  of  Algiers  demanded  from  oar  agent 
$59,496  for  twenty-one  captives,  which  was  ^2,833  a  man. 
The  agent  flattered  himself  they  could  be  ransomed  for  f  1,200 
apiece.  His  secretary  informed  us,  at  the  same  time,  that  Spain 
had  paid  1 1,600. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  537 

In  1787,  the  Russians  redeemed  at  $1,546  a  man. 

In  1788,  a  well-informed  inhabitant  of  Algiers  assured  the 
Minister  Plenipotentiary  of  the  United  States  at  Paris,  that  no 
nation  had  redeemed,  since  the  Spanish  treaty,  at  less  than  from 
£250  to  £300  sterling,  the  medium  of  which  is  $1,237.  Cap- 
tain O'Brien,  at  the  same  date,  thinks  we  must  pay  |1,800,  and 
mentions  a  Savoy  captain,  just  redeemed  at  $4,074. 

In  1789,  Mr.  Logie,  the  English  consul  at  Algiers,  informed  a 
person  who  wished  to  ransom  one  of  our  common  sailors,  that 
he  would  cost  from  £450  to  £500  sterling,  the  mean  of  which 
is  $2,137.  In  December  of  the  same  year,  Captain  O'Brien 
thinks  our  men  will  now  cost  $2,290  each,  though  a  Jew  mer- 
chant believes  he  could  get  them  for  $2,264. 

In  1790,  July  9th,  a  Mr.  Simpson,  of  Gibraltar,  who,  at  some 
particular  request,  had  taken  pains  to  find  for  what  sum  our  cap- 
tives could  be  redeemed,  finds  that  the  fourteen  will  cost  $34,- 
79  228,  which  is  $2,485  a  man.  At  the  same  date,  one  of  them, 
a  Scotch  boy,  a  common  mariner,  was  actually  redeemed  at 
8,000  livres,  equal  to  $1,481,  which  is  within  nineteen  dollars 
of  the  price  Simpson  states  for  common  men ;  and  the  charge 
des  affaires  of  the  United  States  at  Paris  is  informed  that  the 
whole  may  be  redeemed  at  that  rate,  adding  fifty  per  cent,  on 
the  captains,  which  would  bring  it  to  $1,571  a  man. 

It  is  found  then  that  the  prices  are  1,200,  1,237,  1,481,  1,546, 
1,571,  1,600, 1,800,  2,137.  2,264,  2,485, 2,833,  and  2,920  dollars 
a  man,  not  noticing  that  of  .$4,074,  because  it  was  for  a  captain. 

In  1786,  there  were  2,200  captives  in  Algiers,  which,  in  1789, 
had  been  reduced  by  death  or  ransom  to  655.  Of  ours  six  have 
died,  and  one  has  been  ransomed  by  his  friends. 

From  these  facts  and  opinions,  some  conjecture  may  be  formed 
of  the  terms  on  which  the  liberty  of  our  citizens  may  be  obtained. 

But  should  it  be  thought  better  to  repress  force  by  force,  an- 
other expedient  for  their  liberation  may  perhaps  offer.  Captures 
made  on  the  enemy  may  perhaps  put  us  into  possession  of  some 
of  their  mariners,  and  exchange  be  substituted  for  ransom.  It  is 
aot  indeed  a  fixed  usage  with  them  to  exchange  prisoners.     It  is 


538  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

rather  their  custom  to  refuse  it.  However,  such  exchanges  are 
sometimes  effected,  by  allowing  them  more  or  less  of  advantage. 
They  have  sometimes  accepted  of  two  Moors  for  a  Christian,  at 
others  they  have  refused  five  or  six  for  one.  Perhaps  Turkish 
captives  may  be  objects  of  greater  partiality  with  them,  as  their 
government  is  entirely  in  the  hands  of  Turks,  who  are  treated  in 
every  instance  as  a  superior  order  of  beings.  Exchange,  too, 
will  be  more  practicable  in  our  case,  as  our  captives  have  not 
been  sold  to  private  individuals,  but  are  retained  in  the  hands 
of  the  Government. 

The  liberation  of  our  citizens  has  an  intimate  connection  with 
the  liberation  of  our  commerce  in  the  Mediterranean,  now  under 
the  consideration  of  Congress.  The  distresses  of  both  proceed 
from  the  same  cause,  and  the  measures  which  shall  be  adopted 
for  the  relief  of  the  one,  may,  very  probably,  involve  the  relief 
of  the  other. 


XX. — The  Sea'etary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred  by  the 
House  of  Representatives,  the  representation  from  the  Gen- 
eral Court  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts,  on  the 
subjects  of  the  cod  and  whale  fisheries,  together  with  the  seve- 
ral papers  accompanying  it,  has  had  the  same  under  con- 
sideration, and  thereupon  m,akes  the  following  report : 

Febi-uai-y  1,  1791. 

The  representation  sets  forth  that,  before  the  late  war,  about 
four  thousand  seamen,  and  about  twenty-four  thousand  tons  of 
shipping,  were  annually  employed  from  that  State,  in  the  whale 
fishery,  the  produce  whereof  was  about  three  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  pounds  lawful  money  a  year. 

That,  previous  to  the  same  period,  the  cod  fishery  of  that  State 
employed  four  thousand  men,  and  twenty-eight  thousand  tons 
of  shipping,  and  produced  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
pounds  a  year. 

That  these  branches  of  business,  annihilated  during  the  war, 
have  been,  in  some  degree,  recovered  since  ;  but  that  they  labor 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  539 

under  many  and  heavy  embarrassments,  which,  if  not  removed, 
or  lessened,  will  render  the  fisheries  every  year  less  extensive 
and  important. 

That  these  embarrassments  are,  heavy  duties  on  their  produce 
abroad,  and  bounties  on  that  of  their  competitors  ;  and  duties  at 
home  on  several  articles,  particularly  used  in  the  fisheries. 

And  it  asks  that  the  duties  be  taken  ofi" ;  that  bounties  be 
given  to  the  fishermen ;  and  the  national  influence  be  used 
abroad,  for  obtaining  better  markets  for  their  produce. 

The  cod  and  whale  fisheries,  carried  on  by  different  persons, 
from  difierent  ports,  in  ditferent  vessels,  in  different  seas,  and 
seeking  different  markets,  agree  in  one  circumstance,  in  being  as 
unprofitable  to  the  adventurer,  as  important  to  the  public.  A 
succinct  view  of  their  rise,  progress,  and  present  state,  with  dif- 
ferent nations,  may  enable  us  to  note  the  circumstances  which 
have  attended  their  prosperity,  and  their  decline  ;  to  judge  of  the 
embarrassments  which  are  said  to  oppress  ours  ;  to  see  whether 
they  depend  on  our  own  will,  and  may,  therefore,  be  remedied 
immediately  by  ourselves,  or,  whether  depending  on  the  will  of 
others,  they  are  without  the  reach  of  remedy  from  us,  either 
dii-ectly  or  indirectly. 

Their  history  being  as  unconnected  as  their  practice,  they  shall 
be  separately  considered. 

Within  twenty  years  after  the  supposed  discovery  of  New- 
foundland, by  the  Cabots,  we  find  that  the  abundance  of  fish  on 
its  banks,  had  already  drawn  the  attention  of  the  people  of  Eu- 
rope. For,  as  early  as  1517,  or  1519,  we  are  told  of  fifty  ships 
being  seen  there  at  one  time.  The  first  adventurers  in  that 
fishery  were  the  Biscayans,  of  Spain,  the  Basques  and  Bas-Bre- 
tons,  of  Prance,  all  united  anciently  in  language,  and  still  in 
habits,  and  in  extreme  poverty.  The  last  circumstance  enabled 
them  long  to  retain  a  considerable  share  of  the  fishery.  In  1577, 
the  French  had  one  hundred  and  fifty  vessels  there  ;  the  Span- 
iards had  still  one  hundred,  and  the  Portuguese  fifty,  when  the 
English  had  only  fifteen.  The  Spaniards  and  Portuguese  seem 
at  length  to  have  retired  silently,  the  French  and  English  claim- 


540  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

ing  the  fishery  exckisively,  as  an  appurtenance  to  their  adjacent 
colonies,  and  the  profits  being  too  small  for  nations  surcharged 
with  the  precious  metals  proceeding  from  their  mines. 

Without  materials  to  trace  the  intermediate  progress,  we  only 
know  that,  so  late  as  1744,  the  French  employed  there  five  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four  ships,  and  twenty-seven  thousand  five  hun- 
dred seamen,  and  took  one  million  two  hundred  and  forty-six 
thousand  quintals  of  fish,  which  was  three  times  the  extent  to 
which  England  and  her  colonies  together,  carried  this  fishery  at 
that  time. 

The  English,  in  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
had  employed,  generally,  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  vessels  in 
the  Newfoundland  fishery.  About  1670  we  find  them  reduced 
to  eighty,  and  one  hundred,  the  inhabitants  of  New  England  be- 
ginning now  to  supplant  them.  A  little  before  this,  the  British 
Parliament  perceiving  that  their  citizens  were  unable  to  subsist 
on  the  scanty  profits  which  sufficed  for  their  poorer  competitors, 
endeavored  to  give  them  some  advantage  by  prohibiting  the  im- 
portation of  foreign  fish  ;  and,  at  the  close  of  the  century,  they 
formed  some  regulations  for  their  government  and  protection, 
and  remitted  to  them  some  duties.  A  successful  war  enabled 
them,  in  1713,  to  force  from  the  French  a  cession  of  the  Island 
of  Newfoundland  ;  under  these  encouragements,  the  English  and 
American  fisheries  began  to  thrive.  In  1731  we  find  the  Eng- 
lish take  two  hundred  thousand  quintals  of  fish,  and  the  Ameri- 
cans two  hundred  and  thirty  thousand,  besides  the  refuse  fish, 
not  fit  for  European  markets.  They  continue  to  gain  ground, 
and  the  French  to  lose  it,  insomuch  that,  about  1755,  they  are 
said  to  have  been  on  a' par  ;  and,  in  1768,  the  French  have  only 
two  hundred  and  fifty-nine  vessels,  of  twenty-four  thousand  four 
hundred  and  twenty  tons,  nine  thousand  seven  hundred  and 
twenty-two  seamen,  taking  two  hundred  thousand  quintals,  while 
America  alone,  for  some  three  or  four  years  before  that,  and  so 
on,  to  the  commencement  of  the  late  war,  employed  six  hundred 
and  sixty-five  vessels,  of  twenty-five  thousand  six  hundred  and 
fifty  tons,  and  four  thousand  four  hundred  and  five  seamen,  and 


OFFrClAL    PAPERS.  541 

took  from  three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  to  upwards  of  four 
hundred  thousand  quintals  of  fish,  and  England  a  still  greater 
quantity,  five  hundred  and  twenty-six  thousand  quintals,  as  is  said. 

Spain  had  formally  relinquished  her  pretensions  to  a  participa- 
tion in  these  fisheries,  at  the  close  of  the  preceding  war ;  and, 
at  the  end  of  this,  the  adjacent  continent  and  islands  being  di- 
vided between  the  United  States,  the  English  and  French,  (for 
the  last  retained  two  small  islands  merely  for  this  object,)  the 
right  of  fishing  was  appropriated  to  them  also. 

France,  sensible  of  the  necessity  of  balancing  the  power  of 
England  on  the  water,  and,  therefore,  of  improving  every  re- 
source for  raising  seamen,  and  seeing  that  her  fishermen  could 
not  maintain  their  competition  without  some  public  patronage, 
adopted  the  experiment  of  bounties  on  her  own  fish,  and  duties 
on  that  of  foreign  nations  brought  into  her  markets.  But,  not- 
withstanding this,  her  fisheries  dwindle,  from  a  change  taken 
place,  insensibly,  in  the  character  of  her  navigation,  which,  from 
being  the  most  economical,  is  now  become  the  most  expensive. 
In  1786,  she  is  said  to  have  employed  but  seven  thousand  men 
in  this  fishery,  and  to  have  taken  four  hundred  and  twenty-six 
thousand  quintals  ;  and.  in  1787,  but  six  thousand  men,  and  one 
hundred  and  twenty-eight  thousand  quintals.  She  seems  not 
yet  sensible  that  the  unthriftiness  of  her  fisheries  proceeds  from 
the  want  of  economy,  and  not  the  want  of  markets ;  and  that 
the  encouragement  of  our  fishery  abridges  that  of  a  rival  nation, 
whose  power  on  the  ocean  has  long  threatened  the  loss  of  all 
balance  on  that  element. 

The  plan  of  the  English  Government,  since  the  peace,  has 
been  to  prohibit  all  foreign  fish  in  their  markets,  and  they  have 
given  from  eighteen  to  fifty  thousand  pounds  sterling  on  every 
fishing  vessel  complying  with  certain  conditions.  This  policy  is 
said  to  have  been  so  far  successful,  as  to  have  raised  the  number 
of  seamen  employed  in  that  business,  in  1786,  to  fourteen  thou- 
sand, and  the  quantity  of  fish  taken,  to  732,000  quintals.         * 


542  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

The  fisheries  of  the  United  States,  annihilated  during  the 
war ;  their  vessels,  utensils,  and  fishermen  destroyed ;  their  mar- 
kets in  the  Mediterranean  and  British  America  lost,  and  their  pro- 
duce dutied  in  those  of  France  ;  their  competitors  enabled  by 
boundes  to  meet  and  undersell  them  at  the  few  markets  remain- 
ing open,  without  any  public  aid,  and,  indeed,  paying  aids  to 
the  public  ; — such  were  the  hopeless  auspices  under  which  this 
important  business  was  to  be_  resumed.  Yet  it  was  resumed, 
and,  aided  by  the  mere  force  of  natural  advantages,  they  em- 
ployed, during  the  years  1786,  1787,  1788,  and  1789,  on  an 
average,  fi.ve  hundred  and  thirty-nine  vessels,  of  nineteen  thou- 
sand one  hundred  and  eighty-five  tons,  three  thousand  two  hun- 
dred and  eighty-seven  seamen,  and  took  two  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  six  hundred  and  fifty  quintals  of  fish.  *  *  * 
And  an  official  paper  *  *  shows  that,  in  the  last  of  those 
years,  our  exportation  amounted  to  three  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  thousand  and  twenty  quintals,  and  thirty  thousand  four  hun- 
dred and  sixty-one  barrels  ;  deduction  made  of  three  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  one  quintals,  and  six  thousand  three  hundred 
and  forty-three  barrels  of  foreign  fish,  received  and  re-exported. 
*  *      Still,  however,  the  calculations     *  *    which 

accompany  the  representation,  show  that  the  profits  of  the  sales 
m  the  years  1787  and  1788,  were  too  small  to  afford  a  living  to 
the  fishermen,  and  on  those  of  1789,  there  was  such  a  loss  as  to 
withdraw  thirty-three  vessels,  of  the  town  of  Marblehead  alone, 
from  the  further  pursuit  of  this  business  ;  and  the  apprehension 
is,  that,  without  some  public  aid,  those  still  remaining  will  con- 
tinue to  withdraw,  and  this  whole  commerce  be  engrossed  by  a 
single  nation. 

This  rapid  view  of  the  cod  fishery  enables  us  to  discern  under 
what  policy  it  has  flourished  or  declined  m  the  hands  of  other 
nations,  and  to  mark  the  fact,  that  it  is  too  poor  a  business  to  be 
left  to  itself,  even  with  the  nation  most  advantageously  situated. 

It  will  now  be  proper  to  count  the  advantages  which  aid,  and 
the  disadvantages  which  oppose  us,  in  this  conflict. 

Our  advantages  are — 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  543 

1.  The  neighborhood  of  the  great  fisheries,  which  permits  our 
fishermen  to  bring  home  their  fish  to  be  salted  by  their  wives 
and  children. 

2.  The  shore  fisheries,  so  near  at  hand,  as  to  enable  the  vessel? 
to  run  into  port  in  a  storm,  and  so  lessen  the  risk,  for  which  dis 
tant  nations  must  pay  insurance. 

3.  The  winter  fisheries,  which,  like  household  manufactures 
employ  portions  of  time,  which  would  otherwise  be  useless. 

4.  The  smallness  of  the  vessels,  which  the  shortness  of  the 
voyage  enables  us  to  employ,  and  which,  consequently,  reqidre 
but  a  small  capital. 

5.  The  cheapness  of  our  vessels,  which  do  not  cost  above  the 
half  of  the  Baltic  fir  vessels,  computing  price  and  duration. 

6.  Their  excellence  as  sea  boats,  which  decreases  the  risk  and 
quickens  the  return. 

7.  The  superiority  of  our  mariners  in  skill,  activity,  enter- 
prise, sobriety,  and  order. 

8.  The  cheapness  of  provisions. 

9.  The  cheapness  of  casks,  which,  of  itself,  is  said  to  be  equal 
to  an  extra  profit  of  fifteen  per  cent. 

These  advantages  are  of  such  force,  that,  while  experience 
nas  proved  that  no  other  nation  can  make  a  mercantile  profit  on 
the  Newfoundland  fishery,  nor  can  support  it  without  national 
aid,  we  can  make  a  living  profit,  if  vent  for  our  fish  can  be  pro- 
cured. 

Of  the  disadvantages  opposed  to  us,  those  which  depend  on 
ourselves,  are — 

Tonnage  and  naval  duties  on  the  vessels  employed  in  the  fish- 
ery. 

Impost  duties  on  salt. 

On  tea,  rum,  sugar,  molasses,  hooks,  lines,  and  leads,  duck, 
cordage,  and  cables,  iron,  hemp,  and  twine,  used  in  the  fishery  ; 
coarse  woollens,  worn  by  the  fishermen,  and  the  poll  tax  levied 
by  the  State  on  their  persons.  The  statement  No.  6,  shows  the 
amount  of  these,  exclusive  of  the  State  tax  and  drawback  on 
the  fish  exported,  to  be  $5  25  per  man,  or  $57  75  per  vessel  of 


544  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

sixty-five  tons.  When  a  business  is  so  nearly  in  equilibrio  that 
one  can  hardly  discern  whether  the  profit  be  sufficient  to  con- 
tinue it  or  not,  smaller  sums  than  these  suffice  to  turn  the  scale 
against  it.  To  these  disadvantages,  add  ineffectual  duties  on  the 
importation  of  foreign  fish.  In  justification  of  these  last,  it  is 
urged  that  the  foreign  fish  received,  is  in  exchange  for  the  pro- 
iuce  of  agriculture.  To  which  it  may  be  answered,  that  the 
thing  given,  is  more  merchantable  than  that  received  in  ex- 
change, and  agriculture  has  too  many  markeis  to  be  allowed  to 
take  away  those  of  the  fisheries.  It  will  rest,  therefore,  with 
the  wisdom  of  the  Legislature  to  decide,  whether  prohibition 
should  not  be  opposed  to  prohibition,  and  high  duty  to  high 
duty,  on  the  fish  of  other  nations  ;  whether  any,  and  which,  of 
the  naval  and  other  duties  may  be  remitted,  or  an  equivalent 
given  to  the  fisherman,  in  the  form  of  a  drawback,  or  bounty ; 
and  whether  the  loss  of  markets  abroad,  may  not,  in  some  de- 
gree, be  compensated,  by  creating  markets  at  home  ;  to  which 
might  contribute  the  constituting  fish  a  part  of  the  military  ra- 
tion, in  stations  not  too  distant  from  navigation,  a  part  of  the 
necessary  sea  stores  of  vessels,  and  the  encouraging  private  indi- 
viduals to  let  the  fishermen  share  with  the  cultivator,  in  furnish- 
ing the  supplies  of  the  table.  A  habit  introduced  from  motives 
of  patriotism,  would  soon  be  followed  from  motives  of  taste  ; 
and  who  will  undertake  to  fix  the  limits  to  this  demand,  if  it 
can  be  once  excited,  with  a  nation  which  doubles,  and  will  con- 
tinue to  double,  at  very  short  periods  ? 

Of  the  disadvantages  which  depend  on  others,  are — 

1.  The  loss  of  the  Mediterranean  markets. 

2.  Exclusions  from  the  markets  of  some  of  our  neighbors. 

3.  High  duties  in  those  of  others  ;  and, 

4.  Bounties  to  the  individuals  in  competition  with  us. 

The  consideration  of  these  will  find  its  place  more  aptly,  after 
a  review  of  the  condition  of  our  wliale  fishery  shall  have  led  us 
to  the  same  point.  To  this  branch  of  the  subject,  therefore,  we 
will  now  proceed. 

The  whale  fishery  was  first  brought  into  notice  of  the  southern 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  545 

nations  of  Europe,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  by  the  same  Biscay- 
ans  and  Basques  who  led  the  way  to  the  fishery  of  Newfound- 
land. They  began  it  on  their  own  coasts,  but  soon  found  that 
the  principal  residence  of  the  whale  was  in  the  Northern  seas, 
into  which,  therefore,  they  pursued  him.  In  1578  they  em- 
ployed twenty-five  ships  in  that  business.  The  Dutch  and 
Hamburghers  took  it  up  after  this,  and  about  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  the  former  employed  about  two  hundred 
ships,  and  the  latter  about  three  hundred  and  fifty. 

The  English  endeavored  also  to  participate  of  it.  In  1672, 
they  offered  to  their  own  fishermen  a  bounty  of  six  shillings  a 
ton,  on  the  oil  they  should  bring  home,  and  instituted,  at  differ- 
ent times,  different  exclu'sive  companies,  all  of  which  failed  of 
success.  They  raised  their  bounty,  in  1733,  to  twenty  shillings 
8  ton,  on  the  admeasurement  of  the  vessel.  In  1740,  to  thirty 
shillings,  with  a  privilege  to  the  fishermen  against  being  impressed. 
The  Basque  fishery,  supported  by  poverty  alone,  had  maintained 
but  a  feeble  existence,  before  competitors  aided  by  the  bounties 
of  their  nation,  and  was,  in  fine,  annihilated  by  the  war  of  1745, 
at  the  close  of  which  the  English  bounty  was  raised  to  forty 
shillings.  Prom  this  epoch,  their  whale  fishery  went  on  between 
the  limits  of  twenty-eight  and  sixty-seven  vessels,  till  the  com- 
mencement of  the  last  war. 

The  Dutch,  in  the  meantime,  had  declined  gradually  to  about 
one  hundred  and  thirty  ships,  and  have,  since  that,  fallen  down 
to  less  than  half  that  number.  So  that  their  fishery,  notwith- 
standing a  bounty  of  thirty  florins  a  man,  as  well  as  that  of 
Hamburg,  is  now  nearly  out  of  competition. 

In  1715,  the  Americans  began  their  whale  fishery.  They 
were  led  to  it  at  first  by  the  whales  which  presented  themselves 
on  their  coasts.  They  attacked  them  there  in  small  vessels  of 
forty  tons.  As  the  whale,  being  infested,  retired  from  the  coast, 
they  followed  him  farther  and  farther  into  the  ocean,  still  en- 
larging their  vessels  with  their  adventures,  to  sixty,  one  hundred, 
and  two  hundred  tons.  Having  extended  their  pursuit  to  the 
Western  Islands,  they  fell  in,  accidentally,  with  the  spermaceti 

VOL.  VII.  35 


546  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

whale,  of  a  different  species  from  that  of  Greenland,  which 
alone  had  hitherto  been  known  in  commerce  ;  more  fierce  and 
active,  and  whose  oil  and  head  matter  was  found  to  be  more 
valuable,  as  it  might  be  used  in  the  interior  of  houses  without 
otfending  the  smell.  The  distinction  now  first  arose  between 
the  Northern  and  Southern  fisheries ;  the  object  of  the  former 
being  the  Greenland  whale,  which  frequents  the  Northern  coasts 
and  seas  of  Europe  and  America  ;  that  of  the  latter  being  the 
spermaceti  whale,  which  was  found  in  the  Southern  seas,  from 
the  Western  Islands  and  coast  of  Africa,  to  that  of  Brazil,  and 
still  on  to  the  Falkland  Islands.  Here,  again,  within  soundings, 
on  the  coast  of  Brazil,  they  found  a  third  species  of  whale, 
which  they  called  the  black  or  Brazil  whale,  smaller  than  the 
Greenland,  yielding  a  still  less  valuable  oil,  fit  only  for  summer 
use,  as  it  becomes  opaque  at  50  degrees  of  Fahrenheit's  termome- 
ter,  while  that  of  the  spermaceti  whale  is  limpid  to  41,  and  of 
the  Greenland  whale  to  36,  of  the  same  thermometer.  It  is 
only  worth  taking,  therefore,  when  it  falls  in  the  way  of  the 
fishermen,  but  not  worth  seeking,  except  when  they  have  failed 
of  success  against  the  spermaceti  whale,  in  which  case,  this 
kind,  easily  found  and  taken,  serves  to  moderate  their  l6ss. 

In  1771  the  Americans  had  one  hundred  and  eighty-three  ves- 
sels, of  thirteen  thousand  eight  hundred  and  twenty  tons,  in  the 
Northern  fishery,  and  one  hundred  and  twenty-one  vessels,  of 
fourteen  thousand  and  twenty  tons,  in  the  Southern,  navigated 
by  four  thousand  and  fifty-nine  men.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
late  war,  they  had  one  hundred  and  seventy-seven  vessels  in  the 
Northern,  and  one  hundred  and  thirty-two  in  the  Southern  fish- 
ery. At  that  period,  our  fishery  being  suspended,  the  English 
seized  the  opportunity  of  pushing  theirs.  They  gave  additional 
bounties  of  £500,  £400,  £300,  £200,  £100  sterling,  annually, 
to  the  five  ships  which  should  take  the  greatest  quantities  of  oil. 
The'  effect  of  which  was  such,  as,  by  the  year  1786,  to  double 
the  quantity  of  common  oil  necessary  for  their  own  consumption. 
Finding,  on  a  review  of  the  subject,  at  that  time,  that  their  boun- 
ties had  cost  the  Government  £  13  10s.  sterling  a  man,  annually 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  547 

or  sixty  per  cent,  on  the  cargoes,  a  part  of  which  went  conse- 
quently to  ease  the  purchases  of  this  article  made  hy  foreign 
nations,  they  reduced  the  northern  bounty  from  forty  to  thirty 
shillings  the  ton  of  admeasurement. 

They  had,  some  little  time  before,  turned  their  attention  to 
the  Southern  fishery,  and  given  very  great  bounties  in  it,  and 
had  invited  the  fishermen  of  the  United  States  to  conduct  their 
enterprises.  Under  their  guidance,  and  with  such  encourage- 
ment, this  fishery,  which  had  only  begun  with  them  in  1784  or 
1785,  was  rising  into  value.  In  1788  they  increased  their  boun- 
ties, and  the  temptations  to  our  fishermen,  under  the  general 
description  of  foreigners  who  had  been  employed  in  the  whale 
fishery,  to  jjass  over  with  their  families  and  vessels  to  the  British 
dominions,  either  in  America  or  Europe,  but  preferably  to  the 
latter.  The  effect  of  these  measures  had  been  prepared,  by  our 
whale  oils  becoming  subject,  in  their  market,  to  the  foreign  duty 
of  £18  5s.  sterling  the  ton,  which,  being  more  than  equal  to  the 
price  of  the  common  oil,  operated  as  a  prohibition  on  that,  and 
gave  to  their  spermaceti  oil  a  preference  over  ours  to  that  amount. 


The  fishermen  of  the  United  States,  left  without  resource,  by 
the  loss  of  their  market,  began  to  think  of  accepting  the  British 
invitation,  and  of  removing,  some  to  Nova  Scotia,  preferring 
smaller  advantages  in  the  neighborhood  of  their  ancient  couhtry 
and  friends,  others  to  Great  Britain,  postponing  country  and 
friends  to  high  premiums. 

The  Government  of  France  could  not  be  inattentive  to  these 
proceedings.  They  saw  the  danger  of  letting  four  or  five  thou- 
sand seamen,  of  the  best  in  the  world,  be  transferred  to  the  ma- 
rine strength  of  another  nation,  and  carry  over  with  them  an  art, 
which  they  possessed  almost  exclusively.  To  give  time  for  a 
comiterplan,  the  Marquis  de  Lafayette,  the  valuable  friend  and 
citizen  of  this,  as  well  as  that  country,  wrote  to  a  gentleman  in 
Boston,  to  dissuade  the  fishermen  from  accepting  the  British  pro- 
posals, and  to  assure  them  that  their  friends  in  France  would  en- 


548  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

deavor  to  do  something  for  them.  A  vessel  was  then  arrived 
from  Hahfax  at  Nantucket,  to  take  off  those  who  had  proposed 
to  remove.  Two  famihes  had  gone  abroad,  and  others  were 
going.  In  this  moment,  the  letter  arriving,  suspended  their  de- 
signs. Not  another  went  abroad,  and  the  vessel  returned  to 
Halifax  with  only  the  two  families. 

The  plan  adopted  by  the  French  ministry,  very  different  from 
that  of  the  first  mover,  was  to  give  a  counter  invitation  to  the 
Nantucket  men  to  remove  and  settle  in  Dunkirk,  offering  them  a 
bounty  of  fifty  livres  (between  nine  and  ten  dollars)  a  ton  on 
the  admeasurement  of  the  vessels  they  should  equip  for  the  whale 
fishery,  with  some  other  advantages.  Nine  families  only,  of 
thirty-three  persons,  accepted  the  invitation.  This  was  in  1785. 
In  1786,  the  ministry  were  led  to  see  that  their  invitation  would 
produce  but  little  effect,  and  that  the  true  means  of  preventing 
the  emigration  of  our  fishermen  to  the  British  dominions  would 
be  to  enable  them  still  to  follow  their  calling  from  their  native 
country,  by  giving  them  a  new  market  for  their  oils,  instead  of 
the  old  one  they  had  lost.  The  duties  were,  therefore,  abated 
on  American  whale  oil  immediately,  and  a  further  abatement 
promised  by  the  letter  No.  8,  and,  in  December,  1787,  the  arret 
No.  9  was  passed. 

The  rival  fishermen  immediately  endeavored  to  turn  this 
measure  to  their  own  advantage,  by  pouring  their  whale  oils  into 
the' markets  of  France,  where  they  were  enabled,  by  the  great 
premiums  received  from  their  Government,  perhaps,  too,  by  ex- 
traordinary indemnifications,  to  undersell  both  the  French  and 
American  fishermen.  To  repel  this  measure,  France  shut  her 
ports  to  all  foreign  fish  oils  whatever,  by  the  arret  No.  10.  The 
British  whale  fishery  fell,  in  consequence,  the  ensuing  year  from 
two  hundred  and  twenty-two  to  one  hundred  and  seventy-eight 
ships.  But  this  general  exclusion  has  palsied  our  fishery  also. 
On  the  7th  of  December,  1788,  therefore,  by  the  arret  No.  11, 
the  ports  of  France  still  remaining  shut  to  all  other  nations,  were 
again  opened  to  the  produce  of  the  whale  fisheries  of  the  United 
States,  continuing,  however,  their  endeavors  to  recover  a  share 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS,  549 

in  this  fishery  tnemselves,  by  the  aid  of  our  fishermen.  In  1784, 
1785,  1786,  they  had  had  four  ships.  In  1787,  three.  In  1788, 
seventeen  in  the  two  fisheries  of  four  thousand  five  hundred  tons. 
These  cost  them  in  bounty  225,000  livres,  which  divided  on 
one  thousand  five  hundred  and  fifty  tons  of  oil,  the  quantity 
they  took,  amounted  to  145  livres  (near  twenty-seven  dollars) 
the  ton,  and,  on  about  one  hundred  natives  on  board  the  seven- 
teen ships,  (for  there  were  one  hundred  and  fifty  Americans  en- 
gaged by  the  voyage)  came  to  2,225  livres,  or  about  416|  dol- 
lars a  man. 

We  have  had,  during  the  years  1787,  1788  and  1789,  on  an 
average,  ninety-one  vessels,  of  five  thousand  eight  hundred  and 
twenty  tons,  in  the  northern,  and  thirty-one  of  four  thousand 
three  hundred  and  ninety  tons  in  the  southern  fishery.      *         * 

These  details  will  enable  Congress  to  see  with  what  a  compe- 
tition we  have  to  struggle  for  the  continuance  of  this  fishery, 
not  to  say  its  increase.  Against  prohibitory  duties  in  one  coun- 
try, and  bounties  to  the  adventurers  in  both  of  those  which  are 
contending  with  each  other  for  the  same  object,  ours  have  no 
auxiliaries,  but  poverty  and  rigo'rous  economy.  The  business, 
unaided,  is  a  wretched  one.  The  Dutch  have  peculiar  advan- 
tages for  the  northern  fishery,  as  being  within  six  or  eight  days' 
sail  of  the  grounds,  as  navigating  with  more  economy  than  any 
other  nation  in  Europe,  their  seamen  content  with  lower  wages, 
and  their  merchants  with  lower  profit.  Yet  the  memorial  No. 
13,  from  a  committee  of  the  whale  merchants  to  the  States  Gen- 
eral of  Holland,  in  the  year  1775,  states,  that  fourteen  millions 
of  guilders,  equal  to  five  million  six  hundred  thousand  dollars,  has 
been  lost  in  that  fishery  in  forty-seven  years,  being  about  one 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year.  The  States  Gen- 
eral, thereupon,  gave  a  bounty  of  thirty  guilders  a  man  to  the 
fishermen.  A  person  immediately  acquainted  with  the  British 
whale  fishery,  and  whose  information  merits  confidence,  haa 
given  assurance  that  the  ships  employed  in  their  northern  fish- 
ery, in  1788,  sunk  £800  each,  on  an  average,  more  than  the 
amount  of  the  produce  and  bounties.     An  English  ship  of  three 


550  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

hundred  tons  and  forty-two  seamen,  in  this  fishery,  generally 
brings  home,  after  a  four  months'  voyage,  twenty-five  tons  of 
oil,  worth  £  437  10s.  sterling  ;  but  the  wages  of  the  officers  and 
seamen  will  be  £400 ;  there  remain  but  £37  10s.,  not  worth 
taking  into  account,  towards  the  outfit  and  merchants'  profit. 
These,  then,  must  be  paid  by  the  Government ;  and  it  is  on  this 
idea  that  the  British  bounty  is  calculated. 

Our  vessels  for  the  northern  fishery  average  sixty-four  tons, 
and  cost,  when  built,  fitted  out,  and  victualled  for  the  first  voy- 
age, about  three  thousand  dollars.  They  have  taken,  on  an 
average,  the  three  last  years,  according  to  the  statement  No.  12, 
eighteen  tons  of  oil,  worth,  at  our  market,  nine  hundred  dollars, 
which  are  to  pay  all  expenses,  and  subsist  the  fishermen  and 
merchant.  Our  vessels  for  the  southern  fishery  average  one  hun^ 
dred  and  forty  tons,  and  cost,  when  built,  fitted  out,  and  victualled, 
for  their  first  voyage,  about  six  thousand  five  hundred  dollars. 
They  have  taken  on  an  average,  the  three  last  years,  according 
to  the  same  statement,  thirty-two  tons  of  oil  each,  worth  at  our 
market  three  thousand  two  hundred  dollars,  which  are,  in  like 
manner,  to  pay  all  expenses,  arid  subsist  the  owners  and  nav- 
igators. These  expenses  are  great,  as  the  voyages  are  generally 
of  twelve  months'  duration.  No  hope  can  arise  of  their  condition 
being  bettered  by  an  augmentation  of  the  price  of  oil.  This  is 
kept  down  by  the  competition  of  the  vegetable  oils,  which  an- 
swer the  same  purposes,  not  quite  so  well,  but  well  enough  to 
become  preferable,  were  the  price  to  be  raised,  and  so  well,  in- 
deed, as  to  be  more  generally  used  than  the  fish  oils  for  lighting 
houses  and  cities. 

The  American  whale  fishery  is  principally  followed  by  the 
inhabitants  of  the  island  of  Nantucket — a  sand  bar  of  aboui 
fifteen  miles  long,  and  three  broad,  capable  of  maintaining,  by 
its  agriculture,  about  twenty  families  ;  but  it  employed  in  these 
fisheries,  before  the  war,  between  five  or  six  thousand  men  and 
boys ;  and,  in  the  only  harbor  it  possesses,  it  had  one  hundred 
and  forty  vessels,  one  hundred  and  thirty-two  of  which  were  of 
the  larger  kind,  as  being  employed  in  the  southern  fishery.    In 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  551 

agriculture,  then,  they  have  no  resource  ;  and,  if  that  of  their 
fishery  cannot  be  pursued  from  their  own  habitations,  it  is  nat- 
ural they  sh'ould  seek  others  from  which  it  can  be  followed,  and 
preferably  those  where  they  will  find  a  sameness  of  language,  re- 
ligion, laws,  habits,  and  kindred.  A  foreign  emissary  has  lately 
been  among  them,  for  the  purpose  of  renewing  the  invitations  to 
a  change  of  situation.  But,  attached  to  their  native  country, 
they  prefer  continuing  in  it,  if  their  continuance  there  can  be 
made  supportable. 

This  brings  us  to  the  question,  what  relief  does  the  condition 
of  this  fishery  require  ? 

1.  A  remission  of  duties  on  the  articles  used  for  their  calling. 

3.  A  retaliating  duty  on  foreign  oils,  coming  to  seek  a  compe- 
tion  with  them  in  or  from  our  ports. 

3.  Free  markets  abroad. 

1.  The  remission  of  duties  will  stand  on  nearly  the  same 
ground  with  that  to  the  cod  fishermen. 

2.  The  only  nation  whose  oil  is  brought  hither  for  competition 
with  our  own,  makes  ours  pay  a  duty  of  about  eighty-two  dol- 
lars the  ton,  in  their  ports.  Theirs  is  brought  here,  too,  to  be 
reshipped  fraudulently,  under  our  flag,  into  ports  where  it 
could  not  be  received  under  theirs,  and  ought  not  to  be  cov- 
ered by  ours,  if  we  mean  to  preserve  our  own  admission  into 
them. 

The  3d  and  principal  object  is  to  find  markets  for  the  vent  ot 
oil. 

Portugal,  England,  Holland,  Sweden,  Denmark,  Prussia, 
Russia,  the  Hanse  towns,  supply  themselves  and  something 
more.  Spain  and  Italy  receive  supplies  from  England,  and  need 
the  less,  as  their  skies  are  clearer.  France  is  the  only  country 
which  can  take  our  surplus,  and  they  take  principally  of  the 
common  oil ;  as  the  habit  is  but  commencing  with  them  of  as- 
cribing a  just  value  to  spermaceti  whale.  Some  of  this,  however, 
finds  its  vent  there.  There  was,  indeed,  a  particular  interest 
perpetually  soliciting  the  exclusion  of  our  oils  from  their  mar- 
kets.,    The  late  government  there  saw  well  that  what  we  should 


552  JEFFERSON'S   "WORKS. 

lose  thereby  would  be  gained  by  others,  not  by  themselves.  And 
we  are  to  hope  that  the  present  government,  as  wise  and  friendly, 
will  also  view  us,  not  as  rivals,  but  as  co-operators  against  a 
common  rival.  Friendly  arrangements  with  them,  and  accom- 
modation to  mutual  interest,  rendered  easier  by  friendly  dispo- 
sitions existing  on  both  sides,  may  long  secure  to  us  this  import- 
ant resource  for  our  seamen.  Nor  is  it  the  interest  of  the  fisher- 
man alone,  which  calls  for  the  cultivation  of  friendly  arrange- 
ments with  that  nation ;  besides  five-eights  of  our  whale  oil,  and 
two-thirds  of  our  salted  fish,  they  take  from  us  one-fourth  of  our 
tobacco,  three-fourths  of  our  live  stock  *  *  a  considerable 
and  growing  portion  of  our  rice,  great  supplies,  occasionally,  of 
other  grain ;  in  1789,  which,  indeed,  was  extraordinary,  four 
millions  of  bushels  of  wheat,  and  upwards  of  a  million  of  bushels 
of  rye  and  barley  *  *  and  nearly  the  whole  carried  in  our  own 
vessels.  *  *  They  are  a  free  market  now,  and  will,  in  time, 
be  a  valuable  one  for  ships  and  ship  timber,  potash,  and  peltry. 

England  is  the  market  for  the  greatest  part  of  our  spermaceti 
oil.  They  impose  on  all  our  oils  a  duty  of  eighteen  pounds  five 
shillings  sterling  the  ton,  which,  as  to  the  common  kind,  is  a 
prohibition,  as  has  been  before  observed,  and,  as  to  the  sperm- 
aceti, gives  a  preference  of  theirs  over  ours  to  that  amount,  so  as 
to  leave,  in  the  end,  but  a  scanty  benefit  to  the  fishermen ;  and, 
not  long  since,  by  a  change  of  construction,  without  any  change 
of  law,  it  was  made  to  exclude  our  oils  from  their  ports,  when 
carried  in  our  vessels.  On  some  .change  of  circumstance,  it  was 
construed  back  again  to  the  reception  of  our  oils,  on  paying 
always,  however,  the  same  duty  of  eighteen  pounds  five  shillings. 
This  serves  to  show  that  the  tenure  by  which  we  hold  the  ad- 
mission of  this  commodity  in  their  markets,  is  as  precarious  as 
it  is  hard.  Nor  can  it  be  announced  that  there  is  any  disposition 
on  their  part  to  arrange  this  or  any  other  commercial  matter,  to 
mutual  convenience.  The  ex  parte  regulations  which  they  have 
begun  for  mounting  their  navigation  on  the  ruins  of  ours,  can 
only  be  opposed  by  counter  regulations  on  our  part.  And  the 
loss  of  seamen,  the  natural  consequence  of  lost  and  obstructed 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  553 

markets  for  our  fish  and  oil,  calls,  in  the  first  place,  for  serious 
and  timely  attention.  It  will  be  too  late  when  the  seaman  shall 
have  changed  his  vocation,  or  gone  over  to  another  interest.  If 
we  cannot  recover  and  secure  for  him  these  important  branches 
of  employment,  it  behooves  us  to  replace  them  by  others 
equivalent.     We  have  three  nurseries  for  forming  seamen : 

1.  Our  coasting  trade,  already  on  a  safe  footing. 

2.  Our  fisheries,  which,  in  spite  of  natural  advantages,  give 
just  cause  of  anxiety. 

3.  Our  carrying  trade,  our  only  resource  of  indemnification  for 
what  we  lose  in  the  other.  The  produce  of  the  United  States, 
which  is  carried  to  foreign  markets,  is  extremely  bulky.  That 
part  of  it  which  is  now  in  the  hands  of  foreigners,  and  which 
we  may  resume  into  our  own,  without  touching  the  rights  of 
those  nations  who  have  met  us  in  fair  arrangements  by  treaty,  or 
the  interests  of  those  who,  by  their  voluntary  regulations,  have 
paid  so  just  and  liberal  a  respect  to  our  interests,  as  being  meas- 
ured back  to  them  again,  places  both  parties  on  as  good  ground, 
perhaps,  as  treaties  could  place  them — the  proportion,  I  say,  of 
our  carrying  trade,  which  may  be  resumed  without  aft'ecting 
either  of  these  descriptions  of  nations,  will  find  constant  em- 
ployment for  ten  thousand  seamen,  be  worth  two  millions  of 
dollars,  annually,  will  go  on  augmenting  with  the  population  of 
the  United  States,  secure  to  us  a  full  indemnification  for  the  sea- 
men we  lose,  and  be  taken  wholly  from  those  who  force  us  to 
this  act  of  self  protection  in  navigation. 

Hence,  too,  would  follow,  that  their  Newfoundland  ships,  not 
receiving  provisions  from  us  in  their  bottoms,  nor  permitted  (by 
a  law  of  their  own)  to  receive  in  ours,  must  draw  their  subsist- 
ence from  Europe,  which  would  increase  that  part  of  their  ex- 
penses in  the  proportion  of  four  to  seven,  and  so  far  operate  as  a 
duty  towards  restoring  the  level  between  them  and  us.  The 
tables  No.  2  and  12,  will  show  the  quantity  of  tonnage,  and,  con- 
sequently, the  mass  of  seamen  whose  interests  are  in  distress  ;  and 
No.  17,  the  materials  for  indemnification. 

If   regulations  exactly  the  counterpart  of  those  established 


554  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

against  us,  would  be  ineffectual,  from  a  difference  of  circum- 
stances, other  regulations  equivalent  can  give  no  reasonable 
ground  of  complaint  to  any  nation.  Admitting  their  right  of 
keeping  their  markets  to  themselves,  ours  cannot  be  denied  of 
keeping  <^ur  carrying  trade  to  ourselves.  And  if  there  be  any- 
thing unfriendly  in  this,  it  was  in  the  first  example. 

The  loss  of  seamen,  unnoticed,  would  be  followed  by  other 
losses  in  a  long  train.  If  we  have  no  seamen,  our  ships  will  be 
useless,  consequently  our  ship  timber,  iron,  and  hemp  ;  our  ship 
building  will  be  at  an  end,  ship  carpenters  go  over  to  other  na- 
tions, our  young  men  have  no  call  to  the  sea,  our  produce,  car- 
ried in  foreign  bottoms,  be  saddled  with  war-freight  and  insur- 
ance in  times  of  war ;  and  the  history  of  the  last  hundred 
years  shows,  that  the  nation  which  is  our  carrier  has  three  years 
of  war  for  every  four  years  of  peace.  (No.  18.)  We  lose,  during 
the  same  periods,  the  carriage  for  belligerent  powers,  which  the 
neutrality  of  our  flag  would  render  an  incalculable  source  of 
profit ;  we  lose  at  this  moment  the  carriage  of  our  own  produce 
to  the  annual  amount  of  two  millions  of  dollars,  which,  in  the 
possible  progress  of  the  encroachment,  may'extend  to  five  or  six 
millions,  the  worth  of  the  whole,  with  an  increase  in  the  propor- 
tion of  the  increase  of  our  numbers.  It  is  easier,  as  well  as  bet- 
ter, to  stop  this  train  at  its  entrance,  than  when  it  shall  have 
ruined  or  banished  whole  classes  of  useful  and  industrious 
citizens. 

It  will  doubtless  be  thought  expedient  that  the  resumption 
suggested  should  take  effect  so  gradually,  as  not  to  endanger  the 
loss  of  produce  for  the  want  of  transportation ;  but  that,  in  order 
to  create  transportation,  the  whole  plan  should  be  developed, 
and  made  known  at  once,  that  the  individuals  who  may  be  dis- 
posed to  lay  themselves  out  for  the  carrying  business,  may  make 
their  calculations  on  a  full  view  of  all  circumstances. 

On  the  whole,  the  historical  view  we  have  taken  of  these  fish- 
eries, proves  they  are  so  poor  in  themselves,  as  to  come  to  no- 
thing with  distant  nations,  who  do  not  support  them  from  their 
treasury.     We   have  seen  that  the  advantages  of  our  position 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  555 

place  oui  fisheries  on  a  ground  somewhat  higher,  such  as  to  re- 
lieve our  treasury  from  giving  them  support ;  but  not  to  permit 
it  to  draw  support  from  them,  nor  to  dispense  the-  government 
from  the  obligation  of  effectuating  free  markets  for  them  ;  that, 
for  the  great  proportion  of  our  salted  fish,  for  our  common  oil, 
and  a  part  of  our  spermaceti  oil,  markets  may  perhaps  be  pre- 
served, by  friendly  arrangements  towards  those  nations  whose 
arrangements  are  friendly  to  us,  and  the  residue  be  compen- 
sated by  giving  to  the  seamen  thrown  out  of  business  the  cer- 
'  tainty  of  employment  in  another  branch,  of  which  we  have  the 
sole  disposal. 


XXI. — Opinion  against  the  constitutionality  of  a  National  Bank. 

February  15,  1791. 

The  bill  for  establishing  a  National  Bank  undertakes  among 
other  things : — 

1.  To  form  the  subscribers  into  a  corporation. 

2.  To  enable  them  in  their  corporate  capacities  to  receive 
grants  of  land ;  and  so  far  is  against  the  laws  of  Mortmain.* 

3.  To  make  alien  subscribers  capable  of  holding  lands ;  and 
so  far  is  against  the  laws  of  alienage. 

4.  To  transmit  these  lands,  on  the  death  of  a  proprietor,  to  a 
certain  line  of  successors  ;  and  so  far  changes  the  course  of  De- 
scents. 

5.  To  put  the  lands  out  of  the  reach  of  forfeiture  or  escheat  j 
and  so  far  is  against  the  laws  of  Forfeiture  and  Escheat. 

6.  To  transmit  personal  chattels  to  successors  in  a  certain 
line  ;  and  so  far  is  against  the  laws  of  Distribution. 

7.  To  give  them  the  sole  and  exclusive  right  of  banking  under 
the  national  authority ;  and  so  far  is  against  the  laws  of  Mon- 
opoly. 

*  Though  the  Constitution  controls  the  laws  of  Mortmain  so  far  as  to  permit 
Congress  itself  to  hold  land  for  certain  purposes,  yet  not  so  far  as  to  permit  them 
to  communicate  a  similar  right  to  other  corporate  bodies. 


556  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

8.  To  communicate  to  them  a  power  to  make  laws  paramount 
to  the  laws  of  the  States  ;  for  so  they  must  be  construed,  to  pro- 
tect the  institution  from  the  control  of  the  State  legislatures  ; 
and  so,  probably,  they  will  be  conetrued. 

I  consider  the  foundation  of  the  Constitution  as  laid  on  this 
ground :  That  "  all  powers  not  delegated  to  the  United  States, 
by  the  Constitution,  nor  prohibited  by  it  to  the  States,  are  re- 
served to  the  States  or  to  the  people."  [Xllth  amendment.] 
To  take  a  single  step  beyond  the  boundaries  thus  specially 
drawn  around  the  powers  of  Congress,  is  to  take  possession  of  a 
boundless  field  of  power,  no  longer  susceptible  of  any  definition. 

The  incorporation  of  a  bank,  and  the  powers  assumed  by  this 
bill,  have  not,  in  my  opinion,  been  delegated  to  the  United 
States,  by  the  Constitution. 

I.  They  are  not  among  the  powers  specially  enumerated : 
for  these  are  :  1st.  A  power  to  lay  taxes  for  the  purpose  of  pay- 
ing the  debts  of  the  United  States  ;  but  no  debt  is  paid  by  this 
bill,  nor  any  tax  laid.  Were  it  a  bill  to  raise  money,  its  origina- 
tion in  the  Senate  would  condemn  it  by  the  Constitution. 

2d.  "  To  borrow  money."  But  this  bill  neither  borrows 
money  nor  ensures  the  borrowing  it.  The  proprietors  of  the 
bank  will  be  just  as  free  as  any  other  money  holders,  to  lend  or 
not  to  lend  their  money  to  the  public.  The  operation  proposed 
in  the  bill,  first,  to  lend  them  two  millions,  and  then  to  borrow 
them  back  again,  cannot  change  the  nature  of  the  latter  act, 
which  will  still  be  a  payment,  and  not  a  loan,  call  it  by  what 
name  you  please. 

3.  To  "regulate  commerce  with  foreign  nations,  and  among 
the  States,  and  with  the  Indian  tribes."  To  erect  a  bank,  and 
to  regulate  commerce,  are  very  different  acts.  He  who  erects  a 
bank,  creates  a  subject  of  commerce  in  its  bills ;  so  does  he  who 
makes  a  bushel  of  wheat,  or  digs  a  dollar  out  of  the  mines  ;  yet 
neither  of  these  persons  regulates  commerce  thereby.  To  make 
a  thing  which  may  be  bought  and  sold,  is  not  to  prescribe  regu- 
lations for  buying  and  selling.  Besides,  if  this  was  an  exercise 
of  the  power  of  regulating  commerce,  it  would  be  void,  as  ex- 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  557 

tending  as  much  to  the  internal  commerce  of  every  State,  as  to 
its  external.  For  the  power  given  to  Congress  by  the  Constitu- 
tion does  not  extend  to  the  internal  regulation  of  the  commerce 
of  a  State,  (that  is  to  say  of  the  commerce  between  citizen  and 
citizen,)  which  remain  exclusively  with  its  own  legislature  ;  but 
to  its  external  commerce  only,  that  is  to  say,  its  commerce  with 
another  State,  or  with  foreign  nations,  or  with  the  Indian  tribes. 
Accordingly  the  bill  does  not  propose  the  measure  as  a  regulation 
of  trade,  but  as  "  productive  of  considerable  advantages  to  trade." 
Still  less  are  these  powers  covered  by  any  other  of  the  special 
enumerations. 

II.  Nor  are  they  within  either  of  the  general  phrases,  which 
are  the  two  following  : — 

1.  To  lay  taxes  to  provide  for  the  general  welfare  of  the  Uni- 
ted States,  that  is  to  say,  "  to  lay  taxes  for  the  purpose  of  pro- 
viding for  the  general  welfare."  For  the  laying  of  taxes  is  the 
power,  and  the  general  Avelfare  the  purpose  for  which  the  power 
is  to  be  exercised.  They  are  not  to  lay  taxes  ad  libitum  for  any 
purpose  they  please  ;  but  only  to  pay  the  debts  or  provide  for  the 
welfare  of  the  Union.  In  like  manner,  they  are  not  to  do  any- 
thing they  please  to  provide  for  the  general  welfare,  but  only  to 
lay  taxes  for  that  purpose.  To  consider  the  latter  phrase,  not 
as  describing  the  purpose  of  the  first,  but  as  giving  a  distinct  and 
independent  power  to  do  any  aat  they  please,  which  might,  be 
for  the  good  of  the  Union,  would  render  all  the  preceding  and 
subsequent  enumerations  of  power  completely  useless. 

It  would  reduce  the  whole  instrument  to  a  single  phrase,  that 
of  instituting  a  Congress  with  power  to  do  whatever  would  be  for 
the  good  of  the  United  States ;  and,  as  they  would  be  the  sole 
judges  of  the  good  or  evil,  it  would  be  also  a  power  to  do  what- 
ever evil  they  please. 

It  is  an  established  rule  of  construction  where  a  phrase  will 

bear  either  of  two  meanings,  to  give  it  that  which  will  allow 

.  some  meaning  to  the  other  parts  of  the  instrument,  and  not  that 

which  would  render  all   the  others  useless.     Certainly  no  such 

universal  power  was  meant  to  be  given  them.     It  was  intended 


558  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

to  lace  them  up  straitly  -within  the  enumerated  powers,  and  those 
without  which,  as  means,  these  powers  could  not  be  carried  into 
eflfect.  It  is  known  that  the  very  power  now  proposed  as  a 
means  was  rejected  as  an  end  by  the  Convention  which  formed 
the  Constitution.  A  proposition  was  made  to  them  to  authorize 
Congress  to  open  canals,  and  an  amendatory  one  to  empower 
them  to  incorporate.  But  the  whole  was  rejected,  and  one  of 
the  reasons  for  rejection  urged  in  debate  was,  that  then  they 
would  have  a  power  to  erect  a  bank,  which  would  render  the 
great  cities,  where  there  were  prejudices  and  jealousies  on  the 
subject,  adverse  to  the  reception  of  the  Constitution. 

2.  The  second  general  phrase  is,  "  to  make  all  laws  necessary 
and  proper  for  carrying  into  execution  the  enumerated  powers." 
But  they  can  all  be  carried  into  execution  without  a  bank.  A 
bank  therefore  is  not  necessary,  and  consequently  not  authorized 
by  this  phrase. 

It  has  been  urged  that  a  bank  will  give  great  facility  or  con- 
venience in  the  collection  of  taxes.  Suppose  this  were  true : 
yet  the  Constitution  allows  only  the  means  which  are  "neces- 
sary" not  those  which  are  merely  "  convenient"  for  effecting 
the  enumerated  powers.  K  such  a  latitude  of  construction  be 
allowed  to  this  phrase  as  to  give  any  non-enumerated  power,  if 
will  go  to  every  one,  for  there  is  not  one  which  ingenuity  may 
not  torture  into  a  convenience  in  some  instance  or  other,  to  some 
one  of  so  long  a  list  of  enumerated  powers.  It  would  swallow 
up  all  the  delegated  powers,  and  reduce  the  whole  to  one  power, 
as  before  observed.  Therefore  it  was  that  the  Constitution  re- 
strained them  to  the  necessary  means,  that  is  to  say,  to  those 
means  without  which  the  grant  of  power  would  be  nugatory. 

But  let  us  examine  this  convenience  and  see  what  it  is.  The 
report  on  this  subject,  page  3,  states  the  oxAj  general  convenience 
to  be,  the  preventing  the  transportation  and  re-transportation  of 
money  between  the  States  and  the  treasury,  (for  I  pass  over  the 
increase  of  circulating  medium,  ascribed  to  it  as  a  want,  and 
which,  according  to  my  ideas  of  paper  money,  is  clearly  a  demerit.) 
Every  State  will  have  to  pay  a  sum  of  tax  money  into  the  treas- 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  659 

ury ;  and  the  treasury  will  have  to  pay,  in  every  State,  a  part 
of  the  interest  on  the  public  debt,  and  salaries  to  the  officers  of 
government  resident  in  that  State.  In  most  of  the  States  there 
will  still  be  a  surplus  of  tax  money  to  come  up  to  the  seat  of  gov- 
ernment for  the  officers  residing  there.  The  payments  of  interest 
and  salary  in  each  State  may  be  made  by  treasury  orders  on  the 
State  collector.  This  will  take  up  the  great  export  of  the  money 
he  has  collected  in  his  State,  and  consequently  prevent  the  great 
mass  of  it  from  being  drawn  out  of  the  State.  If  there  be  a 
balance  of  commerce  in  favor  of  that  State  against  the  one  in 
which  the  government  resides,  the  surplus  of  taxes  will  be  re- 
mitted by  the  bills  of  exchange  drawn  for  that  commercial  bal- 
ance. And  so  it  must  be  if  there  was  a  bank.  But  if  there  be 
no  balance  of  commerce,  either  direct  or  circuitous,  all  the  banks 
in  the  world  could  not  bring  up  the  surplus  of  taxes,  but  in  the 
form  of  money.  Treasury  orders  then,  and  bills  of  exchange 
may  prevent  the  displacement  of  the  main  mass  of  the  money 
collected,  without  the  aid  of  any  bank  ;  and  where  these  fail,  it 
cannot  be  prevented  even  with  that  aid. 

Perhaps,  indeed,  bank  bills  may  be  a  more  convenient  vehicle 
than  treasury  orders.  But  a  little  difference  in  the  degree  of 
convenience,  cannot  constitute  the  necessity  which  the  con- 
stitution makes  the  ground  for  assuming  any  non-enumerated 
power. 

Besides ;  the  existing  banks  will,  without  a  doubt,  enter  into 
arrangements  for  lending  their  agency,  and  the  more  favorable, 
as  there  will  be  a  competition  among  them  for  it ;  whereas  the 
bill  delivers  us  up  bound  to  the  national  bank,  who  are  free  to  re- 
fuse all  arrangement,  but  on  their  own  terms,  and  the  public 
not  free,  on  such  refusal,  to  employ  any  other  bank.  That  of 
Philadelphia,  I  believe,  now  does  this  business,  by  their  post- 
notes,  which,  by  an  arrangement  with  the  treasury,  are  paid  by 
any  State  collector  to  whom  they  are  presented.  This  expedi- 
ent alone  suffices  to  prevent  the  existence  of  that  necessity 
which  may  justify  the  assumption  of  a  non-enumerated  power  as 
a  means  for  carrying  into  effect  an  enumerated  one.     The  thing 


560  JEFFEESON'S   WORKS. 

may  be  done,  and  has  been  done,  and  "well  done,  without  this 
assumption ;  therefore,  it  does  not  stand  on  that  degree  of  neces- 
sity which  can  honestly  justify  it. 

It  may  be  said  that  a  bank  whose  bills  would  have  a  curren- 
cy all  over  the  States,  would  be  more  convenient  than  one  whose 
currency  is  limited  to  a  single  State.  So  it  would  be  still  more 
convenient  that  there  should  be  a  bank,  whose  bills  should  have 
a  currency  all  over  the  world.  But  it  does  not  follow  from  this 
superior  conveniency,  that  there  exists  anywhere  a  power  to  es- 
tablish such  a  bank ;  or  that  the  world  may  not  go  on  very  well 
without  it. 

Can  it  be  thought  that  the  Constitution  intended  that  for  a 
shade  or  two  of  convenience,  more  or  less,  Congress  should  be 
authorized  to  break  down  the  most  ancient  and  fundamental  laws 
of  the  several  States ;  such  as  those  against  Mortmain,  the  laws  of 
Alienage,  the  rules  of  descent,  the  acts  of  distribution,  the  laws  of 
escheat  and  forfeiture,  the  laws  of  monopoly  ?  Nothing  but  a  ne- 
cessity invincible  by  any  other  means,  can  justify  such  a  prosti- 
tution of  laws,  which  constitute  the  pillars  of  our  whole  system 
of  jurisprudence.  Will  Congress  be  too  straight-laced  to  carry 
the  constitution  into  honest  effect,  unless  they  may  pass  over  the 
foundation-laws  of  the  State  government  for  the  slightest  con- 
venience of  theirs  ? 

The  negative  of  the  President  is  the  shield  provided  by  the 
constitution  to  protect  against  the  invasions  of  the  legislature : 
1.  The  right  of  the  Executive.  2.  Of  the  Judiciary.  3.  Of 
the  States  and  State  legislatures.  The  present  is  the  case  of  a 
right  remaining  exclusively  with  the  States,  and  consequently 
one  of  those  intended  by  the  Constitution  to  be  placed  under  its 
protection. 

It  must  be  added,  however,  that  unless  the  President's  mind 
on  a  view  of  everything  which  is  urged  for  and  against  this  bill, 
is  tolerably  clear  that  it  is  unauthorised  by  the  Constitution ;  if  the 
pro  and  the  con  hang  so  even  as  to  balance  his  judgment,  a  just 
respect  for  the  wisdom  of  the  legislature  would  naturally  decide 
the  balance  in  favor  of  their  opinion.     It  is  chiefly  for  cases 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  561 

where  they  are  clearly  misled  by  error,  ambition,  or  interest,  that 
the  Constitution  has  placfed  a  check  in  the  negative  of  the  Presi- 
dent. 


XXII. — Opinion  relative  to  locating  the  Ten  Mile  Square  for  the 
Federal  Government,  and  building  the  Federal  city. 

Marcli  n,  1791. 

Objects  which  may  merit  the  attention  of  the  President,  at 
Georgetown. 

The  commissioners  to  be  called  into  action. 

Deeds  of  cession  to  be  taken  from  the  land-holders. 

Site  of  the  capitol  and  President's  house  to  be  determined  on. 

Proclamation  completing  the  location  of  the  territory,  and  fix- 
ing the  site  of  the  capitol. 

Town  to  be  laid  off.  Squares  of  reserve  are  to  be  decided  on 
for  the  capitol,  President's  house,  offices  of  government,  town- 
house,  prison,  market,  and  public  walks. 

Other  squares  for  present  sale  designated. 

Terms  of  sale  to  be  settled.  As  there  is  not  as  yet  a  town 
legislature,  and  things  may  be  done  before  there  is  one  to  pre- 
vent them,  which  yet  it  would  be  desirable  to  prevent,  it  would 
seem  justifiable  and  expedient  that  the  President  should  form  a 
capitulary  of  such  regulations  as  he  may  think  necessary  to  be 
observed,  until  there  shall  be  a  town  legislature  to  undertake 
this  office  ;  such  capitulary  to  be  indented,  signed,  sealed,  and 
recorded,  according  to  the  laws  of  conveyance  in  Maryland.  And 
to  be  referred  to  in  every  deed  for  ponveyance  of  the  lots  to  pur- 
chasers, so  as  to  make  a  part  thereof.  The  same  thing  might  be 
effected,  by  inserting  special  covenants  for  every  regulation  in 
every  deed  ;  but  the  former  method  is  the  shortest.  I  cannot 
help  again  suggesting  here  one  regulation  formerly  suggested,  to 
wit :  To  provide  for  the  extinguishment  of  fires,  and  the  open- 
ness and  convenience  of  the  town,  by  prohibiting  houses  of  ex- 
cessive height.  And  making  it  unlawful  to  build  on  any  one's 
purchase  any  house  with  more  than  two  floors  between  the  com- 
voL.  vir.  36 


562 


JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


mon  level  of  the  earth  and  the  eaves,  nor  with  any  ouier  floor  in 
the  roof  than  one  at  the  eaves.  To  consider  in  what  way  the 
contracts  for  the  public  buildings  shall  be  made,  and  whether  as 
many  bricks  should  not  be  made  this  summer  as  may  employ 
brick-layers  in  the  beginning  of  the  season  of  1792,  till  more  can 
be  made  in  that  season. 

With  respect  to  the  amendment  of  the  location  so  as  to  in- 
clude Bladensburgh,  I  am  of  opinion  it  may  be  done  with  the 
consent  of  the  legislature  of  Maryland,  and  that  that  consent  may 
be  so  far  counted  on,  as  to  render  it  expedient  to  declare  the  loca- 
tion at  once. 


The  location  A  B  C  D  A  having  been  once  made,  I  con- 
sider as  obligatory  and  unalterable,  but  by  consent  of  parties,  ex- 
cept so  far  as  was  necessary  to  render  it  practicable  by  a  correc- 
tion of  the  beginning.  That  correction  might  be  lawfully  made 
either  by  stopping  at  the  river,  or  at  the  spring  of  Hunting  creek, 
or  by  lengthening  the  course  from  the  court-house  so  that  the 
second  course  should  strike  the  mouth  of  Hunting  creek.  I  am 
of  opinion,  therefore,  that  the  beginning  at  the  mouth  of  Hunt- 
ing creek,  is  legally  justifiable.  But  I  would  advise  the  location 
E  F  G  H  E  to  be  hazarded  so  as  to  include  Bladensburgh, 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS. 


563 


because  it  is  a  better  location,  and  I  think  will  certainly  be  con- 
firmed by  Maryland.  That  State  will  necessarily  have  to  pass 
another  act  confirming  whatever  location  shall  be  made,  because 
her  former  act  authorized  the  delegates  then  in  office,  to  convey 
the  lands.  But  as  they  were  not  located,  no  conveyance  has 
been  made,  and  those  persons  are  now  out  of  office,  and  dis- 
persed. Suppose  the  non-concurrence  of  Maryland  should  de- 
feat the  location  E  F  G  H  E,  it  can  only  be  done  on  this 
principle,  that  the  first  location  A  B  C  D  A  was  valid,  and 
unalterable,  but  by  mutual  consent.  Then  their  non-concurrence 
will  re-establish  the  first  location  A  B  0  D  A,  and  the  second 
location  will  be  good  for  the  part  E  I  D  K  E  without  their 
concurrence,  and  this  will  place  us  where  we  should  be  were  we 
now  to  complete  the  location  E  B  C  K  E.  Consequently,  the 
experiment  of  an  amendment  proposed  can  lose  nothing,  and 
may  gain,  and  probably  will  gain,  the  better  location. 

When  I  say  it  can  lose  nothing,  I  count  as  nothing,  the  trian- 
gle A  I  E,  which  would  be  in  neither  of  the  locations.  Per- 
haps this  might  be  taken  in  afterwards,  either  with  or  without 
the  consent  of  Virginia. 


XXIII. — Report  on  the  policy  of  securing  particular  marks  to 
Manufacturers,  by  law. 

Decembor  9,  1791, 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred  by  the  House 
of  Representatives  the  petition  of  Samuel  Breck  and  others,  pro- 
prietors of  a  sail-cloth  manufactory  in  Boston,  praying  that  they 
may  have  the  exclusive  privilege  of  using  particular  marks  foi 
designating  the  sail-cloth  of  their  manufactory,  has  had  the  same 
under  consideration,  and  thereupon 

Reports,  That  it  would,  in  his  opinion,  contribute  to  fidelity 
in  the  execution  of  maaufacturers,  to  secure  to  every  manufac- 
tory an  exclusive  right  to  some  mark  on  its  wares,  proper  to 
itself. 


564  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS 

That  this  should  be  done  by  general  laws,  extending  eqna 
right  to  every  case  to  which  the  authority  of  the  Legislaturi^ 
■shduld  be  competent. 

That  these  cases  are  of  divided  jurisdiction  :  Manufactures 
made  and  consumed  within  a  State  being  subject  to  State  legis- 
lation, while  those  which  are  exported  to  foreign  nations,  -or  to 
another  State,  or  into  the  Indian  Territory,  are  alone  within  .the 
legislation  of  the  General  Government. 

That  it  will,  therefore,  be  reasonable  for  the  General  Govern- 
ment to  provide  in  this  behalf  by  law  for  those  cases  of  manu- 
facture generally,  and  those  only  which  relate  to  commerce  with 
foreign  nations,  and  among  the  several  States,  and  with  the 
Indian  Tribes. 

And  that  this  may  be  done  by  permitting  the  owner  of  every 
manufactory,  to  enter  in  the  records  of  the  court  of  the  district 
wherein  his  manufactory  is,  the  name  with  which  he  chooses 
to  mark  or  designate  his  wares,  and  rendering  it  penal  in  others 
to  put  the  same  mark  to  any  other  wares. 


XXIV. — Opinion  relative  to  the  demolition  of  Mr.  CarroWs 
house  by  Major  L'' Enfant,  in  laying  out  the  Federal  City. 

December  U,  1791. 

Observations  on  Major  L'Enfant's  letter  of  December  7i\ 
1791,  to  the  President,  justifying  his  demolition  of  the  house  of 
Mr.  Carroll,  of  Duddington. 

He  says  that  "  Mr.  Carroll  erected  his  house  partly  on  a  main 
street,  and  altogether  on  ground  to  which  the  public  had  a  more 
immediate  title  than  himself  could  claim."  When  blaming  Mr. 
Carroll,  then,  he  considers  this  as  a  street ;  but  when  justifying 
himself,  he  considers  it  not  yet  as  a  street,  for  to  account  for  his 
not  having  pointed  out  to  Carroll  a  situation  where  he  might 
build,  he  says,  "  The  President  had  not  yet  sanctioned  the  plan 
for  the  distribution  of  the  city,  nor  determined  if  he  would  ap- 
prove the    situation  of  the  several   areas   proposed  to  him  in 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  565 

that  plan  for  public  use,  and  that  I  would  have  been  highly  to 
be  blamed  to  have  anticipated  his  opinion  thereon."  This  latter 
exculpation  is  solid  ;  the  first  is  without  foundation.  The  plan- 
of  the  city  has  not  yet  been  definitely  determined  by  the  Presi- 
dent. Sale  to  individuals,  or  partition  decide  the  plan  as  far  as 
these  sales  or  partitions  go.  A  deed  with  the  whole  plan  an- 
nexed, executed  by  the  President,  and  recorded,  will  ultimately 
fix  it.  But  till  a  sale,  or  partition,  or  deed,  it  is  open  to  alter- 
ation. Consequently,  there  is  as  yet  no  such  thing  as  a  street, 
except  adjacent  to  the  lots  actually  sold  or  divided  ;  the  erection 
of  a  house  in  any  part  of  the  ground  cannot  as  yet  be  a  nuisance 
in  law.  Mr.  Carroll  is  tenant  in  common  of  the  soil  with  the 
public,  and  the  erection  of  a  house  by  a  tenant  in  common  on 
the  common  property,  is  no  nuisance.  Mr.  Carroll  has  acted  im- 
prudently, intemperately,  foolishly  ;  but  he  has  not  acted  illegally. 
There  must  be  an  establishment  of  the  streets,  before  his  house 
can  become  a  nuisance  in  the  eye  of  the  law.  Therefore,  till 
that  establishment,  neither  Major  L'Enfant,  nor  the  commission- 
ers, would  have  had  a  right  to  demolish  his  house,  without  his 
consent. 

The  Major  says  he  had  as  much  right  to  pull  down  a  house, 
as  to  cut  down  a  tree. 

This  is  true,  if  he  has  received  no  authority  to  do  either,  but 
still  there  will  be  this  difference  :  To  cut  down  a  tree  or  to  de- 
molish a  house  in  the  soil  of  another,  is  a  trespass  ;  but  the  cut- 
ting a  tree,  in  this  country,  is  so  slight  a  trespass,  that  a  man 
would  be  thought  litigious  who  should  prosecute  it ;  if  he  pros- 
ecuted civilly,  a  jury  would  give  small  damages  ;  if  criminally, 
the  judge  would  not  inflict  imprisonment,  nor  impose  but  a  small 
fine.  But  the  demolition  of  a  house  is  so  gross  a  trespass,  that 
any  man  would  prosecute  it ;  if  civilly,  a  jury  would  give  great 
damages;  if  criminally,  the  judge  would  punish  heavily  by  fine 
and  imprisonment.  In  the  i^resent  case,  if  Carroll  was  to  bring 
a  civil  action,  the  jury  would  probably  punish  his  folly  by  small 
damages  :  but  if  he  were  to  prosecute  criminally,  the  judge  would 
as  probably  vindicate  the  insult  on  the  laws,  and  the  breach  of 


566  JEFFERSON'S    WORK.^. 

the  peace,  by  heavy  fines  and  imprisonment.  So  that  if  Majoi 
L'Enfant  is  right  in  saying  he  had  as  much  authority  to  pull 
down  a  house  as  to  cut  down  a  tree,  still  he  would  feel  a  differ- 
ence in  the  punishment  of  the  law. 

But  is  he  right  in  saying  he  had  as  much  authority  to  pull 
down  a  house  as  to  cut  down  a  tree  ?  I  do  not  know  what  have 
been  the  authorities  given  him  expressly  or  by  implication,  hnX  I 
can  very  readily  conceive  that  the  authorities  which  he  has  re- 
ceived, whether  from  the  President  or  from  the  commissioners, 
whether  verbal  or  written,  may  have  gone  to  the  demolition  of 
trees,  and  not  houses.  I  am  sure  he  has  received  no  authority, 
either  from  the  President  or  commissioners,  either  expressly  or 
by  implication,  to  pull  down  houses.  An  order  to  him  to  mark 
on  the  ground  the  lines  of  the  streets  and  lots,  might  imply  an 
order  to  remove  trees  or  small  obstructions,  where  they  insuper- 
ably prevented  his  operations  ;  but  a  person  must  know  little  of 
geometry  who  could  not,  in  an  open  field,  designate  streets  arid 
lots,  even  where  a  line  passed  through  a  house,  without  pulling 
the  house  down. 

in  truth,  the  blame  on  Major  L'Enfant,  is  for  having  pulled 
down  the  house,  of  his  own  authority,  and  when  he  had  reason 
to  believe  he  was  in  opposition  to  the  sentiments  of  the  Presi- 
dent; and  his  fault  is  aggravated  by  its  having  been  done  to 
gratify  private  resentment  against  Mr.  Carroll,  and  most  probably 
not  because  it  was  necessary  ;  and  the  styfe  in  which  he  writes 
the  justification  of  his  act,  shows  that  a  continuation  of  the  same 
resentment  renders  him  still  unable  to  acquiesce  under  the  au- 
thority from  which  he  has  been  reproved. 

He  desires  a  line  of  demarcation  between  his  office,  and  that 
of  the  commissioners. 

What  should  be  this  line  ?  and  who  is  to  draw  it  ?  If  we  con- 
sider the  matter  under  the  act  of  Congress  only,  the  President 
has  authority  only  to  name  the  commissioners,  and  to  approve 
or  disapprove  certain  proceedings  of  theirs.  They  have  the 
whole  executive  power,  and  stand  between  the  President  and  the 
Rubordinate  agents.     In  this  view,  they  may  employ  or  dismiss, 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  567 

order  and  countermand,  take  on  themselves  such  parts  of  the 
execution  as  they  please,  and  assign  other  parts  to  subordinate 
agents.  Consequently,  under  the  act  of  Congress,  their  will 
is  the  line  of  demarcation  between  subordinate  agents,  while  no 
such  Hne  can  exist  between  themselves  and  their  agents.  Under 
•the  deed  from  the  proprietors  to  the  President,  his  powers  are 
much  more  ample.  I  do  not  accurately  recollect  the  tenor  of 
the  deed  ;  but  I  am  pretty  sure  it  was  such  as  to  put  much  more 
ample  power  into  the  hands  of  the  President,  and  to  commit  to 
him  the  whole  execution  of  whatever  is  to  be  done  under  the 
deed  ;  and  this  goes  particularly  to  the  laying  out  the  town  :  so 
that  as  to  this,  the  President  is  certainly  authorized  to  draw  the 
line  of  demarcation  between  L'Enfant  and  the  commissioners. 
But  I  believe  there  is  no  necessity  for  it,  as  far  as  I  have  been 
able  to  judge,  from  conversations  and  consultations  with  the 
commissioners.  I  think  they  are  disposed  to  follow  implicitly 
the  will  of  the  President,  whenever  they  can  find  it  out ;  but 
'  L'Enfant's  letters  do  not  breathe  the  same  moderation  or  ac- 
quiescence ;  and  I  think  it  would  be  much  safer  to  say  to  him, 
"  the  orders  of  the  commissioners  are  your  line  of  demarcation," 
than  by  attempting  to  define  his  powers,  to  give  him  a  line 
where  he  may  meet  with  the  commissioners  foot  to  foot,  and 
chicane  and  raise  opposition  to  their  orders  whenever  he  thinks  they 
pass  his  line.  I  confess,  that  on  a  view  of  L'Enfant's  proceed- 
ings and  letters  latterly,  I  am  thoroughly  persuaded  that,  to  render 
him  useful,  his  temper  must  be  subdued  ;  and  that  the  only  means 
of  preventing  his  giving  constant  trouble  to  the  President,  is  to 
submit  him  to  the  unlimited  control  of  the  commissioners ;  we 
known  the  discretion  and  forbearance  with  which  they  will  ex 
ercise  it. 


XXV. —  Opinion  relative  to  certain  lands  on  Lake  Erie,  sola 
by  the  United  States  to  Pennsylvania. 

Dcce.niier  19,  1791. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred,  by  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  a  letter  from  the  Governor  of  Penn- 


568  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

sylvania,  with  the  documents  therein  mentioned,  on  the  subjec 
of  certain  lands  on  Lake  Erie,  having  had  the  same  under  con- 
sideration, thereupon  Reports : — 

That  Congress,  by  their  resolution  of  June  6th,  1788,  directed 
the  Geographer  General  of  the  United  States  to  ascertain  the 
quantity  of  land  belonging  to  the  United  States  between  Penn- 
sylvania and  Lake  Erie,  and  authorized  a  sale  thereof. 

That  a  sale  was  accordingly  made  to  the  commonwealth  of 
Pennsylvania. 

That  Congress,  by  their  resolution  of  September  4th,  1788,  re- 
linquished to  the  said  commonwealth  all  their  right  to  the  gov- 
ernment and  jurisdiction  of  the  said  tract  of  land  ;  but  the  right 
of  soil  was  not  transferred  by  the  resolution. 

That  a  survey  of  the  said  tract  has  been  since  made,  and  the 
amount  of  the  purchase  money  been  settled  between  the  comp- 
trollers of  the  United  States  and  of  the  said  commonwealth,  and 
that  the  Governor  of  Pennsylvania  declares  in  the  said  letter,  to 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  that  he  is  ready  to  close  the 
transaction  on  behalf  of  the  said  commonwealth.  That  there  is 
no  person  at  present  authorized,  by  law,  to  convey  to  the  said 
commonwealth  the  right  of  soil,  in  the  said  tract  of  land. 

And  the  Secretary  of  State  is  therefore  of  opinion  that  the 
said  letter  and  documents  should  be  laid  before  the  legislature 
of  the  United  States  to  make  such  provision  by  law  for  convey- 
ing the  said  right  of  soil,  as  they  in  their  wisdom  shall  think  fit. 


XXVI. — Report  relative  to  negotiations  with  Spain  to  secure  thf 
free  navigation  of  the  Mississippi,  and  a  port  on  the  same. 

Uecc'mbvT  'i'i,  1791. 

The  Secretary  of  State  reports  to  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  that  one  of  the  commissioners  of  Spain,  in  the  name  of 
both,  has  lately  communicated  to  him  verbally,  by  order  of  his 
court,  that  his  Catholic  Majesty,  apprized  of  our  solicitude  to 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  569 

have  some  arrangement  made  respecting  our  free  navigation  of 
the  river  Mississippi,  and  the  use  of  a  port  thereon,  is  ready  to 
enter  into  treaty  thereon  at  Madrid. 

The  Secretary  of  State  is  of  opinion  that  this  overture  should 
be  attended  to  without  delay,  and  that  the  proposal  of  treating 
at  Madrid,  though  not  what  might  have  been  desired,  should  yet 
be  accepted,  and  a  commission  plenipotentiary  made  out  for  the 
purpose. 

That  Mr.  Carmichael,  the  present  charge  de  affaires  of  the 
United  States  at  Madrid,  from  the  local  acquaintance  which  he 
must  have  acquired  with  persons  and  circumstances,  would  be  an 
useful  and  proper  member  of  the  commission  ;  but  that  it  would 
be  useful  also  to  join  with  him  some  person  more  particularly 
acquainted  with  the  circumstances  of  the  navigation  to  be  treat- 
ed of. 

That  the  fund  appropriated  by  the  act  providing  the  means  of 
intercourse  between  the  United  States  and  foreign  nations,  will 
insufficiently  furnish  the  ordinary  and  regular  demands  on  it,  and 
is  consequently  inadequate  to  the  mission  of  an  additional  com- 
missioner express  from  hence. 

That,  therefore,  it  will  be  advisable,  on  this  account,  as  well 
as  for  the  sake  of  despatch,  to  constitute  some  one  of  the  minis- 
ters of  the  United  States  in  Europe,  jointly  with  Mr.  Carmichael, 
commissioners  plenipotentiary  for  the  special  purpose  of  negotiat- 
ing and  concluding,  with  any  person  or  persons  duly  authorized 
by  his  Catholic  Majesty,  a  convention  or  treaty  for  the  free  navi- 
gation of  the  river  Mississippi  by  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  under  such  accommodations  with  respect  to  a  port,  and 
other  circumstances,  as  may  render  the  said  navigation  practica- 
ble, useful,  and  free  from  dispute  ;  saving  to  the  President  and 
Senate  their  respective  rights  as  to  their  ratification  of  the  same ; 
and  that  the  said  negotiation  be  at  Madrid,  or  such  other  place 
In  Spain,  as  shall  be  desired  by  his  Catholic  Majesty. 


570  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


March  18,  1792. 

The  appointment  of  Mr.  Carmichael  and  Mr.  Short,  as  com. 
missioners  to  negotiate,  with  the  court  of  Spain,  a  treatj'^  or  con- 
vention relative  to  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi,  and  which 
perhaps  may  be  extended  to  other  interests,  rendering  it  neces- 
sary that  the  subjects  to  be  treated  of  should  be  developed,  and 
the  conditions  of  arrangement  explained  : 

The  Secretary  of  State  reports  to  the  President  of  the  United 
States  the  following  observations  on  the  subjects  of  negotiation 
between  the  United  States  of  America  and  the  court  of  Spain,  to 
be  communicated  by  way  of  instruction  to  the  commissioners  of 
the  United  States,  appointed  as  before  mentioned,  to  manage 
that  negotiation. 

These  subjects  are, 
1.  Boundary. 
II.  The  navigation  of  the  Mississippi. 

III.  Commerce. 

1.  As  to  boundary,  that  between  Georgia  and  Florida  is  the 
only  one  which  will  need  any  explanation.  Spain  sets  up  a 
claim  to  possessions  within  the  State  of  Georgia,  founded  on  her 
having  rescued  them  by  force  from  the  British  during  the  late 
war.  The  following  view  of  the  subject  seems  to  admit  no  re- 
ply: 

The  several  States  now  comprising  the  United  States  of 
America,  were,  from  their  first  establishment,  separate  and  dis- 
tinct societies,  dependent  on  no  other  society  of  men  whatever. 
They  continued  at  the  head  of  their  respective  governments  the 
executive  magistrate  who  presided  over  the  one  they  had  left, 
and  thereby  secured,  in  etfect,  a  constant  amity  with  the  nation. 
In  this  stage  of  their  government  their  several  boundaries  were 
fixed ;  and  particularly  the  southern  boundary  of  Georgia,  the 
only  one  now  in  question,  was  established  at  the  31st  degree  of 
latitude  from  the  Apalachicola  westwardly ;  and  the  western 
boundary,  originally  the  Pacific  ocean,  was,  by  the  treaty  of 
Paris,  reduced  to  the  middle  of  the  Mississippi.     The  part  which 


OFFICIAL    PAPEES.  571 

our  chief  magistrate  took  in  a  war,  waged  against  us  by  the  natiors 
among  whom  he  resided,  obHged  us  to  discontinue  him,  and  to 
name  one  within  every  State.  In  the  course  of  this  war  we 
were  joined  by  France  as  an  ally,  and  by  Spain  and  Holland  as 
associates  ;  having  a  common  enemy,  each  sought  that  common 
enemy  wherever  they  could  find  him.  France,  on  our  invitation, 
landed  a  large  army  within  our  territories,  continued  it  with  us 
two  years,  and  aided  us  in  recovering  sundry  places  from  the 
possession  of  the  enemy.  But  she  did  not  pretend  to  keep  pos- 
session of  the  places  rescued.  Spain  entered  into  the  remote 
western  part  of  om-  territory,  dislodged  the  common  enemy  from 
several  of  the  posts  they  held  therein,  to  the  annoyance  of  Spain  ; 
and  perhaps  thought  it  necessary  to  remain  in  some  of  them,  as 
the  only  means  of  preventing  their  return.  We,  in  like  manner, 
dislodged  them  from  several  posts  in  the  same  western  territory, 
to  wit :  Vincennes,  Cahokia,  Kaskaskia,  (fcc,  rescued  the  in- 
habitants, and  retained  constantly  afterwards  both  them  and  the 
territory  under  our  possession  and  government.  At  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  war.  Great  Britain,  on  the  30th  of  November,  1782, 
by  treaty  acknowledged  our  independence,  and  our  boundary,  to 
wit :  the  Mississippi  to  the  west,  and  the  completion  of  the  31st 
degree,  (fcc.  to  the  south.  In  her  treaty  with  Spain,  concluded 
seven  weeks  afterwards,  to  wit,  January  20th,  1783,  she  ceded 
to  her  the  two  Fioridas,  which  had  been  defined  in  the  procla- 
mation  of  1763,  and  Minorca;  and.  by  the  eighth  article  of  the 
treaty,  Spain  agreed  to  restore,  without  compensation,  all  the 
territories  conquered  by  her,  and  not  included  in  the  treaty,  either 
under  the  head  of  cessions  or  restitutions,  that  is  to  say,  all  ex- 
cept Minorca  and  the  Fioridas.  According  to  this  stipulation, 
Spain  was  expressly  bound  to  have,  delivered  up  the  possessions 
she  had  taken  within  the  limits  of  Georgia,  to  Great  Britain,  if 
they  were  conquests  on  Great  Britain,  who  was  to  deliver  them 
over  to  the  United  States  ;  or  rather,  she  should  have  delivered 
them  to  the  United  States  themselves,  as  standing  quoad  hoc  in 
the  place  of  Great  Britain.  And  she  was  bound  by  natural 
rights  to  deUver  them  to   the  same  United   States  on  a   much 


572  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

stronger  ground,  as  the  real  and  only  proprietors  of  those  places 
which  she  had  taken  possession  of  in  a  moment  oi  danger,  witli- 
out  having  had  any  cause  of  war  with  the  United  States,  to 
whom  they  belonged,  and  without  having  declared  any  ;  but, 
on  the  contrary,  conducting  herself  in  other  respects  as  a  friend 
and  associate.      Vattel,  1.  3,  122. 

It  is  an  established  principle,  that  conquest  gives  only  an  in- 
choate treaty  of  peace,  which  does  not  become  perfect  till  con- 
firmed by  the  treaty  of  peace,  and  by  a  renunciation  or  aban- 
donment by  the  former  proprietor.  Had  Great  Britain  been  that 
•former  proprietor,  she  was  so  far  from  confirming  to  Spain  the 
right  to  the  territory  of  Georgia,  invaded  by  Spain,  that  she  ex- 
pressly relinquished  to  the  United  States  any  right  that  might  re- 
main in  her  ;  and  afterwards  completed  that  relinquishment,  by 
procuring  and  consolidating  with  it  the  agreement  of  Spain  her- 
self to  restore  such  territory  without  compensation.  It  is  stiU 
more  palpable,  that  a  war  existing  between  two  nations,  as  Spain 
and  Great  Britain,  could  give  to  neither  the  right  to  seize  ana 
appropriate  the  territory  of  a  third,  which  is  even  neutral,  much 
less  which  is  an  associate  in  the  war,  as  the  United  States  were 
with  Spain.  See,  on  this  subject,  Grotius,  1.  3,  c.  6,  >§.  26. 
Puffendorf,  1.  8,  c.  17,  <§,  23.      Vattel,  1.  3,  <5,  197,  198.. 

On  the  conclusion  of  the  general  peace,  the  United  States  lost 
no  time  in  requiring  from  Spain  an  evacuation  of  their  territory, 
This  has  been  hitherto  delayed  by  means  which  we  need  not 
explain  to  that  court,  but  which  have  been  equally  contrary  to 
our  right  and  to  our  consent. 

Should  Spain  pretend,  as  has  been  intimated,  that  there  was  a 
secret  article  of  treaty  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Brit- 
ain, agreeing,  if  at  the  close  of  the  war  the  latter  should  retain 
the  Floridas,  that  then  the  southern  boundary  of  Georgia  should 
be  the  completion  of  the  32d  degree  of  latitude,  the  commission- 
ers may  safely  deny  all  knowledge  of  the  fact,  and  refuse  con 
ference  on  any  such  postulatum.  Or,  shoxild  they  find  it  neces 
sary  to  enter  into  any  argument  on  the  subject,  they  will  of 
course  do  it  hypothetically  ;  and  in  that  way  may  justly  say,  on 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  573 

the  part  of  the  United  States ;  suppose  that  the  United  States, 
exhausted  by  a  bloody  and  expensive  war  with  Great  Britain, 
might  have  been  willing  to  have  purchased  peace  by  relinquish- 
ing, under  a  particular  contingency,  a  small  part  of  their  terri- 
tory, it  does  not  follow  that  the  same  United  States,  recruited 
and  better  organized,  must  relinquish  the  same  territory  to  Spain 
without  striking  a  blow.  The  United  States,  too,  have  iiTevo- 
cably  put  it  out  of  their  power  to  do  it,  by  a  new  constitution, 
which  guarantees  every  State  against  the  invasion  of  its  territory 
A  disastrous  war,  indeed,  might,  by  necessity,  supersede  this 
stipulation,  (as  necessity  is  above  all  law,)  and  oblige  them  to 
abandon  a  part  of  a  State  ;  but  nothing  short  of  this  can  justify 
or  obtain  such  an  abandonment. 

The  southern  limits  of  Georgia  depend  chiefly  on, 

1.  The  charter  of  Carolina  to   the  lords  proprietors,  in  1G63, 
xtending  southwardly  to  the  river  Matheo,  now  called  St.  John, 

supposed  in  the  charter  to  be  in  latitude  31,  and  so  west  in  a 
direct  line  as  far  as  the  South  Sea.  See  the  charter  in  4th*  Me- 
moires  de  I'Amerique,  554. 

2.  On  the  proclamation  of  the  British  King,  in  1763,  estab- 
lishing the  boundary  between  Georgia  and  the  two  Floridas  to 
begin  on  the  Mississippi,  in  thirty-one  degrees  of  latitude  north 
of  the  equator,  and  running  eastwardly  to  the  Appalachicola ; 
thence,  along  the  said  river  to  the  mouth  of  the  Flint ;  thence, 
in  a  direct  line,  to  the  source  of  St.  Mary's  river,  and  down  the 
same  to  the  ocean.  This  proclamation  will  be  found  in  Postle- 
thwayte  voce  "  British  America." 

3.  On  the  treaties  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Brit- 
ain, of  November  30,  1782,  and  September  3,  1783,  repeating 
and  confirming  these  ancient  boundaries, — 

There  was  an  intermediate  transaction,  to  wit :  a  convention 
concluded  at  the  Pardo,  in  1739,  whereby  it  was  agreed  that 
Ministers  Plenipotentiary  should  be  immediately  appointed  by 

*  Mr.  Short  is  desired  to  purchase  this  book  at  Amsterdam,  or  Paris,  as  he  maj 
not  find  it  at  Madrid,  and  when  it  shall  have  answered  the  purposes  of  this 
mission,  let  it  be  sent  here  for  the  use  of  the  Secretary  of  State's  ofiSce. 


574  JEFFERSON'S    WOEKS. 

Spain  and  Great  Britain  for  settling  the  limits  of  Florida  and 
Carolina.  The  convention  is  to  be  found  in  the  collections  of 
treaties.  Bat  the  proceedings  of  the  Plenipotentiaries  are  un- 
known here.  Qu.  If  it  was  on  that  occasion  that  the  southern 
boundary  of  Carolina  was  transferred  from  the  latitude  of  Matheo 
or  St.  John's  river  further  north  to  the  St.  Mary's  ?  Or  was  it 
the  proclamation  of  1763,  which  first  removed  this  boundary  ? 
[If  the  commissioners  can  procure  in  Spain  a  copy  of  whatever 
was  agreed  on  in  consequence  of  the  convention  of  the  Pardo,  it 
is  a  desirable  State  paper  here.] 

To  this  demonstration  of  our  rights  may  be  added  the  explicit 
declaration  of  the  court  of  Spain,  that  she  would  accede  to  them. 
This  took  place  in  conversations  and  correspondence  thereon  be- 
tween Mr.  Jay,  Minister  Plenipotentiary  for  the  United  States  at 
the  court  at  Madrid,  the  Marquis  de  La  Payette,  and  the  Count 
de  Florida  Blanca.  Monsieur  de  La  Fayette,  in  his  letter  of 
February  19,  1783,  to  the  Count  de  Florida  Blanca,  states  the 
result  of  their  conversations  on  limits  in  these  words :  "  With 
respect  to  limits,  his  Catholic  Majesty  has  adopted  those  that  are 
determined  by  the  preliminaries  of  the  30th  of  November,  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  the  court  of  London."  The  Count 
de  Florida  Blanca,  in  his  answer  of  February  32d,  to  M.  de  La 
Fayette,  says,  "  although  it  is  his  Majesty's  intention  to  abide  for 
the  present  by  the  limits  established  by  the  treaty  of  the  30th  of 
November,  1782,  between  the  English  and  the  Americans,  the 
King  intends  to  inform  himself  particularly  whether  it  can  be  in 
any  ways  inconvenient  or  prejudicial  to  settle  that  affair  amicably 
with  the  United  States;"  and  M.  de  La  Fayette,  in  his  letter  of 
the  same  day  to  Mr.  Jay,  wherein  he  had  inserted  the  preceding, 
says,  "  on  receiving  the  answer  of  the  Count  de  Florida  Blanca, 
(to  wit :  his  answer,  before  mentioned,  to  M.  de  La  Fayette,)  I 
desired  an  explanation  respecting  the  addition  that  relates  to  the 
limits.  I  was  answered,  that  it  was  a  fixed  principle  to  abide 
by  the  limits  established  by  the  treaty  between  the  English  and 
the  Americans ;  that  his  remark  related  only  to  mere  utiimportant 
details,  which  he  wished  to  receive  from  the  Spanish  command 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  575 

ants,  which  would  be  amicably  regulated,  and  would  by  no  means 
oppose  the  general  principle.  I  asked  him,  before  the  Ambassa- 
dor of  France,  [M.  de  Montmorin,]  whether  he  would  give  me 
his  word  of  honor  for  it ;  he  assured  me  he  would,  and  that  I 
might  engage  it  to  the  United  States."  See  the  report  sent  here- 
with. 

n. — The  navigation  of  the  Mississippi. 

Our  right  to  navigate  that  river,  from  its  source  to  where  our 
southern  boundary  strikes  it,  is  not  questioned.  It  is  from  that 
point  downwards,  only,  that  the  exclusive  navigation  is  claimed 
by  Spain;  that  is  to  say,  where  she  holds  the  country  on  both 
sides,  to  wit :  Louisiana  on  the  west,  and  Florida  on  the  east. 

Our  right  to  participate  in  the  navigation  of  that  part  of  tho 
river,  also,  is  to  be  considered,  under 

1.  The  Treaty  of  Paris  of  1763, 

2.  The  Revolution  Treaty  of  1782-3.      • 

3.  The  law  of  nature  and  nations. 

1.  The  war  of  1755 — 1763,  was  carried  on  jointly  by  Great 
Britain  and  the  thirteen  colonies,  now  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
Ka,  against  France  and  Spain.  At  the  peace  which  was  nego- 
tiated by  our  common  magistrate,  a  right  was  secured  to  the  sub- 
jects of  Great  Britain  (the  common  designation  of  all  those  un- 
der his  government)  to  navigate  the  Mississippi  in  its  whole 
breadth  and  length,  from  its  source  to  the  sea,  and  expressly  that 
part  which  is  between  the  island  of  New  Orleans  and  the  right 
bank  of  the  river,  as  well  as  the  passage  both  in  and  out  of  its 
mouth  ;  and  that  the  vessels  should  not  be  stopped,  visited,  or 
subjected  to  the  payment  of  any  duty  whatsoever.  These  are 
the  words  of  the  treaty,  article  VII.  Florida  was  at  the  same 
time  ceded  by  Spain,  and  its  extent  westwardly  was  fixed  to  the 
lakes  Pontchartrain  and  Maurepas,  and  the  river  Mississippi ;  and 
Spain  received  soon  after  from  France  a  cession  of  the  island  of 
New  Orleans,  and  all  the  country  she  held  westward  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi, subject  of  course  to  our  right  of  navigating  between  that 
country  and  the  island  previously  granted  to  us  by  France.  This 
right  was  not  parcelled  out  to  us  in  severalty,  that  is  to  say,  to 


576  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

each  the  exchisive  navigation  of  so  much  of  the  river  as  "was  ad- 
jacent to  our  several  shores — in  which  way  it  would  have  been 
useless  to  all — but  it  was  placed  on  that  footing  on  which  alone 
it  could  be  worth  anything,  to  wit :  as  a  right  to  all  to  navigate 
the  whole  length  of  the  river  in  common.  The  import  of  the 
terms  and  the  reason  of  the  thing  prove  it  was  a  right  of  com- 
mon in  the.  whole,  and  not  a  several  right  to  each  of  a  particular 
part.  To  which  may  be  added  the  evidence  of  the  stipulation 
itself,  that  we  should  navigate  between  New  Orleans  and  the 
western  bank,  which,  being  adjacent  to  none  of  our  States,  could 
be  held  by  us  only  as  a  right  of  common.  Such  was  the  nature 
of  our  right  to  navigate  the  Mississippi,  as  far  as  established  by 
the  treaty  of  Paris. 

2.  In  the  course  of  the  Revolutionary  war,  in  which  the  thir- 
teen colonies,  Spain,  and  Prance,  were  opposed  to  Great  Britain, 
Spain  took  possession  of  several  posts ,  held  by  the  British  in 
Florida.  It  is  unnecessary  to  inquire  whether  the  possession  of 
half  a  dozen  posts  scattered  through  a  country  of  seven  or  eight 
hundred  miles  extent,  could  be  considered  as  the  possession  and 
conquest  of  that  country.  If  it  was,  it  gave  still  but  an  in^ 
choate  right,  as  was  before  explained,  which  could  not  be  per- 
fected but  by  the  relinquishment  of  the  former  possession  at 
the  close  of  the  war  ;  but  certainly  it  could  not  be  considered 
as  a  conquest  of  the  river,  even  against  Great  Britain,  since  the 
possession  of  the  shores,  to  wit,  of  the  island  of  New  Orleans 
on  the  one  side,  and  Louisiana  on  the  other,  having  under- 
gone no  change,  the  right  in  the  water  would  remain  the 
same,  if  considered  only  in  its  relation  to  them  ;  and  if  consider- 
ed as  a  distinct  right,  independent  of  the  shores,  then  no  naval 
victories  obtained  by  Spain  over  Great  Britain,  in  the  course  of 
the  war,  gave  her  the  color  of  conquest  over  any  water  which 
the  British  fleet  could  enter.  Still  less  can  she  be  considered  as 
having  conquered  the  river,  as  against  the  United  States,  with 
whom  she  was  not  at  war.  We  had  a  common  right  of  naviga- 
tion in  the  part  of  the  river  between  Florida,  the  island  of  Nev 
Orleans,  and  the  western  bank,  and  nothing  which  passed  be- 


OFFICIAL     PAPERS.  577 

tween  Spain  and  Great  Britain,  either  during  the  war,  ^r  at  its 
conchision,  could  lessen  that  right.  Accordingly,  at  the  treaty 
of  November,  1782,  Great  Britain  confirmed  the  rights  of  the 
United  States  to  the  navigation  of  the  river,  from  its  source  to 
its  mouth,  and  in  January,  1783,  completed  the  right  of  Spain  to 
the  territory  of  Florida,  by  an  absolute  rehuquishment  of  all  her 
rights  in  it.  This  relinquishment  coidd  not  include  the  naviga- 
tion held  by  the  United  States  in  their  own  right,  because  this 
right  existed  in  themselves  only,  and  was  not  in  Great  Britain. 
If  it  added  anything  to  the  rights  of  Spain  respecting  the  river 
between  the  eastern  and  western  banks,  it  could  only  be  that 
portion  of  right  which  Great  Britain  had  retained  to  herself  in 
the  treaty  with  the  United  States,  held  seven  weeks  before,  to 
wit,  a  right  of  using  it  in  common  with  the  United  States. 

So  that  as  by  the  treaty  of  1763,  the  United  States  had  ob- 
tained a  common  right  of  navigating  the  whole  river  from  its 
source  to  its  mouth,  so  by  the  treaty  of  1782,  that  common  right 
was  confirmed  to  them  by  the  only  power  who  could  pretend 
claims  against  them,  founded  on  the  state  of  war ;  nor  has  that  com- 
mon right  been  transferred  to  Spain  by  either  conquest  or  cession. 

But  our  right  is  built  on  ground  still  broader  and  more  unques- 
tionable, to  wit  : 

3.  On  the  law  of  nature  and  nations. 

If  we  appeal  to  this,  as  we  feel  it  written  on  the  heart  of  man, 
what  sentiment  is  written  in  deeper  characters  than  that  the 
ocean  is  free  to  all  men,  and  their  rivers  to  all  their  inhabitants  ? 
Is  there  a  man,  savage  or  civilized,  unbiased  by  habit,  who  does 
not  feel  and  attest  this  truth  ?  Accordingly,  in  all  tracts  of  coun- 
try united  under  the  same  political  society,  we  find  this  natural 
right  universally  acknowledged  and  protected  by  laying  the  nav- 
igable rivers  open  to  all  their  inhabitants.  When  their  rivers  en- 
ter the  limits  of  another  society,  if  the  right  of  the  upper  inhabit- 
ants to  descend  the  stream  is  in  any  case  obstructed,  it  is  an  act 
of  force  by  a  stronger  society  against  a  weaker,  condemned  by 
the  judgment  of  mankind.  The  late  case  of  Antwerp  and  the 
Scheldt  was  a  striking  proof  a  general  union  of  sentiment  on  this 
VOL.  VII.  37 


578  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

point ;  as  it  is  believed  that  Amsterdam  had  scarcely  an  advocate 
out  of  Holland,  and  even  there  its  pretensions  were  advocated  on 
the  ground  of  treaties,  and  not  of  natural  right.  (The  commis- 
sioners would  do  well  to  examine  thoroughly  what  was  written 
on  this  occasion.)  The  commissioners  will  be  able  perhaps  to 
find,  either  in  the  practice  or  the  pretensions  of  Spain,  as  to  the 
Daiiro,  Tagus,  and  Guadiana,  some  acknowledgments  of  this  prin- 
ciple on  the  part  6f  that  nation.  This  sentiment  of  right  in  favor 
of  .the  upper  inhabitants  must  become  stronger  in  the  proportion 
which  their  extent  of  country  bears  to  the  lower.  The  United 
States  hold  600.000  square  miles  of  habitable  territory  on  the 
Mississippi  and  its  branches,  and  this  river  and  its  branches  afford 
many  thousands  of  miles  of  navigable  waters  penetrating  this 
territory  in  all  its  parts.  The  inhabitable  grounds  of  Spain  below 
our  boundary  and  bordering  on  the  river,  which  alone  can  pretend 
any  fear  of  being  incommoded  by  our  use  of  the  river,  are  not  the 
thousandth  part  of  that  extent.  This  vast  portion  of  the  territory 
of  the  United  States  has  no  other  outlet  for  its  productions,  and 
these  productions  are  of  the  bulkiest  kind.  And  in  truth,  their 
passage  down  the  river  may  not  only  be  innocent,  as  to  the  Span- 
ish subjects  on  the  river,  but  cannot  fail  to  enrich  them  far  be- 
yond their  present  condition.  The  real  interests  then  of  all  the 
inhabitants,  upper  and  lower,  concur  in  fact  with  their  rights. 

If  we  appeal  to  the  law  of  nature  and  nations,  as  expressed  by 
writers  on  the  subject,  it  is  agreed  by  them,  that,  were  the  river, 
where  •  it  passes  between  Florida  and  Louisiana,  the  exclusive 
right  of  Spain,  still  an  innocent  passage  along  it  is  a  natural  right 
in  those  inhabiting  its  borders  above.  It  would  indeed  be  what 
those  writers  call  an  imperfect  right,  because  the  modification  of 
its  exercise  depends  in  a  considerable  degree  on  the  conveniency 
of  the  nation  through  which  they  are  to  pass.  But  it  is  still  a 
right  as  real  as  any  other  right,  however  well-defined;  and  were 
it  to  be  refused,  or  to  be  so  shackled  by  regulations,  not  necessa- 
ry for  the  peace  or  safety  of  its  inhabitants,  as  to  render  its  use 
impracticable  to  us,  it  would  then  be  an  injury,  of  which  we 
should  be  entitled  to  demand  redress.     The  righ-  of  the  upper 


OFFICIAL    PAPEES.  579 

inhabitants  to  use  this  navigation  is  the  counterpart  to  that  of 
those  possessing  the  shore  below,  and  founded  in  the  same  nat- 
ural relations  with  the  soil  and  water.  And  the  line  at  which 
their  rights  meet  is  to  be  advanced  or  withdrawn,  so  as  to  equal- 
ize the  inconveniences  resulting  to  each  party  from  the  exercise 
of  the  right  by  the  other.  This  estimate  is  to  be  fairly  made 
with  a  mutual  disposition  to  make  equal  sacrifices,  and  the  num- 
bers on  each  side  are  to  have  their  due  weight  in  the  estimate. 
Spain  holds  so  very  small  a  tract  of  habitable  land  on  either  side 
below  our  boundary,  that  it  may  in  fact  be  considered  as  a  strait 
of  the  sea ;  for  though  it  is  eighty  leagues  from  our  boundary  to 
the  mouth  of  the  river,  yet  it  is  only  here  and  there  in  spots  and 
slips  that  the  land  rises  above  the  level  of  the  water  in  times  of 
inundation.  There  are,  then,  and  ever  must  be,  so  few  inhabit- 
ants on  her  part  of  the  river,  that  the  freest  use  of  its  navigation 
may  be  admitted  to  us  without  their  annoyance.  For  authori- 
ties on  this  subject,  see  Grot.  1.  2.  c.  2  '§ill,  12,  13,  c.  3.  >§>  7,  8, 
12.  Puffendorf,  1.  3.  c.  3.  <5>  3,  4,  5,  6.  Wolif's  Inst.  <§>  310, 
ni,  312.     Vattel,  1.  1.  -§.  292.  1.  2.  ■§.  123  to  139. 

It  is  essential  to  the  interests  of  both  parties  that 
the  navigation  of  the  river  be  free  to  both,  on  the 
footing  on  which  it  was  defined  by  the  treaty  of 
Paris,  viz. :  through  its  whole  breadth.  The  channel 
of  the  Mississippi  is  remarkably  winding,  crossing 
and  recrossing  perpetually  from  one  side  to  the  other 
of  the  general  bed  of  the  river.  Within  the  elbows 
thus  made  by  the  chamiel,  there  is  generally  an 
eddy  setting  upwards,  and  it  is  by  taking  advantage 
of  these  eddies,  and  constantly  crossing  from  one  to 
another  of  them,  that  boats  are  enabled  to  ascend 
the  river.  Without  this  right  the  whole  river  would 
be  impracticable  both  to  the  Americans  and  Spaniards. 

It  is  a  principle  that  the  right  to  a  thing  gives  a  right  to  the 
means,  without  which  it  could  not  be  used,  that  is  to  say,  that 
the  means  follow  their  end.  Thus,  a  right  to  navigate  a  river, 
draws  to  it  a  right  to  moor  vessels  to  its  shores,  to  land  on  them 


5S0  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

in  casos  of  distress,  or  for  other  necessary  purposes,  &c.  This 
principle  is  founded  in  natural  reason,  is  evidenced  by  the  com- 
mon sense  of  mankind,  and  declared  by  the  writers  before  quoted. 
See  Grot.  1.  2.  c.  2.  '5>  15.  Puffend.  1.  3.  c.  3.  >§,  8.  Vattel,  1.  2. 
•5,  129. 

The  Roman  law,  which,  like  other  municipal  laws,  placed  the 
navigation  of  their  rivers  on  the  footing  of  nature,  as  to  their  own 
citizens,  by  declaring  them  public,*  (fliimina  publica  sunt,  hoc 
est  populi  Romani,  Inst.  2.  t.  1.  "§1  2,)  declared  also  that  the  right 
to  the  use  of  the  shores  was  incident  to  that  of  the  water.  Ibid, 
"^  ],  3,  4,  5.  The  laws  of  every  country  probably  do  the  same. 
This  must  have  been  so  understood  between  Prance  and  Great 
Britain,  at  the  treaty  of  Paris,  when  a  right  was  ceded  to  British 
subjects  to  navigate  the  whole  river,  and  expressly  that  part  be- 
tween the  island  of  New  Orleans  and  the  western  bank,  without 
stipulating  a  word  about  the  use  of  the  shores,  though  both  of 
them  belonged  then  to  Prance,  and  were  to  belong  immediately 
to  Spain.  Had  not  the  use  of  the  shores  been  considered  as  in- 
cident to  that  of  the  water,  it  would  have  been  expressly  stipu- 
lated ;  since  its  necessity  was  too  obvious  to  have  escaped  either 
party.  Accordingly,  all  British  subjects  used  the  shores  habit- 
ually for  the  purposes  necessary  to  the  navigation  of  the  river ; 
and  when  a  Spanish  Governor  undertook  at  one  time  to  forbid 
this,  and  even  cut  loose  the  vessels  fastening  to  their  shores,  a 
British  frigate  went  immediately,  moored  itself  to  the  shore  op 
posite  to  the  town  of  New  Orleans,  and  set  out  guards  with  or 
ders  to  fire  on  such  as  might  attempt  to  disturb  her  moorings 
The  Governor  acquiesced,  the  right  was  constantly  exercised  al 
terwards,  and  no  interruption  ever  offered. 

This  incidental  right  extends  even  beyond  the  shores,  whe 
circumstances  render  it  necessary  to  the  exercise  of  the  principr 
right ;  as,  in  the  case  of  a  vessel  damaged,  where  the  mere  shoi : 
could  not  be  a  safe  deposit  for  her  cargo  till  she  could  be  ro' 
paired,  she  may  remove  it  into  safe  ground  off  the  river.     The 
Roman  law  shall  be  quoted  here  too,  because  it  gives  a  good 

*  Kivers  belong  to  tlie  public,  that  is  to  say  to  the  Roman  people. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  581 

idea  both  of  the  extent  and  the  limitations  of  this  right.  Ins.  1. 
2.  t.  1.  '5>  4.  *Riparuni  quoque  usus  pnblicus  est,  ut  volant  jura 
gentium,  sicut  et  ipsius  tluminis  usus  public  us  est.  Itaque  et 
navigium  ad  ripes  appellere,  et  funes  de  arboribus  ibi  natis  re- 
ligare,  et  navis  onera  in  his  locis  reponere,  liberum  quique  est 
sicuti  nee  per  flumen  ipsum  navigare  quisquam  prohibetur.  And 
again,  ■§.  5,  flittorum  quoque  usus  publicus,  sive  jnri  gentium  est, 
ut  et  ipsius  maris  et  ob  id  data  est  facultas  volentibus,  casas  ibi 
sibi  componere,  in  quas  se  recipere  possirit,  &,c.  Again,  ^^i  1- 
J  Nemo  igitur  ad  littora  maris  accedere  prohibitur ;  veluti  deam- 
bulare  aut  navem  appellere,  sic  tamen  ut  a  villis,  id  est  domiciliis 
monumentisque  ibi  positis,  et  ab  edificiis  abstineat,  nee  iis  dam- 
num inferat. 

Among  incidental  rights  are  those  of  having  pilots,  buoys, 
beacons,  landmarks,  light-houses,  &c.,  to  guide  the  navigators. 
The  establishment  of  these  at  joint  expense,  and  under  joint  reg- 
ulations, may  be  the  subject  of  a  future  convention.  In  the 
meantime,  both  should  be  free  to  have  their  own,  and  refuse 
those  of  the  other,  both  as  to  use  and  expense. 

Very  peculiar  circumstances  attending  the  river  Mississippi,  re- 
quire that  the  incidental  right  of  accommodation  on  the  shore, 
which  needs  only  occasional  exercise  on  other  rivers,  should  be 
habitual  and  constant  on  this.  Sea  vessels  cannot  navigate  that 
river,  nor  the  river  vessels  go  to  sea.  The  navigation  would  be 
useless  then  without  an  entrepot  where  these  vessels  might  safe- 
ly deposit  their  own  cargoes,  and  take  those  left  by  the  others ; 

*  "  The  use  of  the  banks  belong  also  to  the  public  by  the  laws  of  nations,  as  the 
use  of  the  river  itself  does.  Therefore,  every  one  is  free  to  moor  his  vessel  to  the 
bank,  to  fasten  his  cables  to  the  trees  growing  on  it,  to  deposit  the  cargo  of  his 
vessel  in  those  places  in  like  manner  as  every  one  is  free  to  navigate  the  ri-ver 
itself" 

f  "The  use  of  the  shores  also  belongs  to  the  public,  or  is  under  the  law  of  na- 
tions, as  is  that  of  the  sea  itself.  Therefore  it  is,  that  those  who  choose,  have  a 
right  to  build  huts  there,  into  which  they  may  betake  themselves." 

I  "  Nobody,  therefore,  is  prohibited  from  landing  on  the  sea  shore,  walking 
there,  or  mooring  their  vessel  there,  so  nevertheless  tliat  they  keep  out  of  the 
nllas,  that  is,  the  habitations,  monuments,  and  public  buildings,  erected  there, 
and  do  them  no  injury." 


582  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

nna  where  warehouses  and  keepers  might  be  constantly  estab' 
lished  for  the  safeguard  of  the  cargoes.  It  is  admitted,  indeed,  that 
the  incidental  right  thus  extended  into  the  territory  of  the  bor- 
dering inhabitants,  is  liable  to  stricter  modifications  in  proportion 
as  it  interferes  with  their  territorial  right.  But  the  inconveniences 
of  both  parties  are  still  to  have  their  weight,  and  reason  and 
moderation  on  both  sides  are  to  draw  the  line  between  them. 
As  to  this,  we  count  much  on  the  liberality  of  Spain,  on  her  con- 
currence in  opinion  with  us,  that  it  is  for  the  interest  of  both  par- 
ties to  remove  completely  this  germ  of  discord  from  between  us, 
and  draw  our  friendship  as  close  as  circumstances  proclaim  that 
it  should  be,  and  on  the  considerations  which  make  it  palpable 
that  a  convenient  spot  placed  under  our  exclusive  occupation, 
and  exempted  from  the  jurisdiction  and  police  of  their  govern- 
ment, is  far  more  likely  to  preserve  peace  than  a  mere  free  port, 
where  eternal  altercations  would  keep  us  in  eternal  ill  humoi 
with  each  other.  The  policy  of  this  measure,  and  indeed  of  a 
much  larger  concession,  having  been  formerly  sketched  in  a 
paper  of  July  12th,  1790,  sent  to  the  commissioners  severally, 
they  are  now  referred  to  that. 

If  this  be  agreed  to,  the  manner  of  fixing  on  that  extra  ter- 
ritorial spot  becomes  highly  interesting.  The  most  desirable  to 
us,  would  be  a  permission  to  send  commissioners  to  choose  such 
spot,  below  the  town  of  New-  Orleans,  as  they  should  find  most 
convenient. 

If  this  be  refused,  it  would  be  better  now  to  fix  on  the  spot. 
Our  information  is,  that  the  whole  country  below  the  town,  and 
for  sixty  miles  above  it,  on  the  western  shore,  is  low,  marshy, 
and  subject  to  such  deep  inundation  for  many  miles  from  the 
river,  that  if  capable  of  being  reclaimed  at  all  by  banking,  it 
would  still  nerer  afford  an  entrepot  sufficiently  safe ;  that  on  the 
eastern  side  the  only  lands  below  the  town,  not  subject  to  inun- 
dation, are  at  the  Detour  aux  Anglais,  or  English  Turn,  the 
highest  part  of  which,  is  that  whereon  the  fort  St.  Marie  formerly 
stood.  Even  this  is  said  to  have  been  raised  by  art,  and  to  be 
very  little  above  the  level  of  the  inundations.     This  spot  then  is 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  583 

what  we  would  fix  on,  if  obliged  now  to  decide,  with  from  one 
to  as  many  square  miles  of  the  circumjacent  lands  as  can  be  ob- 
tained, and  comprehending  expressly  the  shores  above  and  below 
the  site  of  the  fort  as  far  as  possible.  But  as  to  the  spot  itself, 
the  limits,  and  even  whether  it  shall  be  extra  territorial,  or  only  a  free 
port,  and  what  regulations  it  shall  be  laid  under,  the  convenience 
of  that  Government  is  entitled  to  so  much  respect  and  attention 
on  our  part,  that  the  arrangement  must  be  left  to  the  manage- 
ment of  the  commissioners,  who  will  doubtless  use  their  best 
efforts  to  obtain  all  they  can  for  us. 

The  worst  footing  on  which  the  determination  of  the  ground 
could  be  placed,  would  be  a  reference  to  joint  commissioners ; 
because  their  disagreement,  a  very  probable,  nay,  a  certain  event, 
would  undo  the  whole  convention,  and  leave  us  exactly  where 
we  now  are.  Unless  indeed  they  will  engage  to  us,  in  case  of 
such  disagreement,  the  highest  ground  at  the  Detour  aux  An- 
glais, of  convenient  extent,  including  the  landings  and  harbor 
thereto  adjacent.  This  would  ensure  us  that  ground,  unless 
better  could  be  found  and  mutually  preferred,  and  close  the  delay 
of  right  under  which  we  have  so  long  labored  for  peace-sake. 

It  will  probably  be  urged,  becnuse  it  was  urged  on  a  former  oc- 
sasion,  that,  if  Spain  grants  to  us  the  right  of  navigating  the 
Mississippi,  other  nations  will  become  entitled  to  it  by  virtue  of 
treaties  giving  them  the  rights  of  the  most  favored  nation. 

Two  answers  may  be  given  to  this : 

1.  When  those  treaties  were  made,  no  nations  could  be  under 
contemplation  but  those  then  existing,  or  those  at  most  who 
might  exist  under  similar  circumstances.  America  did  not  then 
exist  as  a  nation  ;  and  the  circumstances  of  her  position  and  com- 
merce, are  so, totally  dissimilar  to  everything  then  known,  that 
the  treaties  of  that  day  were  not  adapted  to  any  such  being. 
They  would  better  fit  even  China  than  America  ;  because,  as  a 
manufacturing  nation,  China  resembles  Europe  more.  When  we 
solicted  France  to  admit  onr  whale  oils  into  her  ports,  though 
she  had  excluded  all  foreign  whale  oils,  her  minister  made  the 
objection  now  under  consideration,  and  the  foregoing  answer 


584  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS, 

was  given.  It  was  found  to  be  solid  ;  and  the  whale  oils  of  the 
United  States  are  in  consequence  admitted,  though  those  of  Por- 
mgal  and  the  Hanse  towns,  and  of  all  other  nations,  are  ex- 
cluded. Again,  when  France  and  England  were  negotiating 
their  late  treaty  of  commerce,  the  great  dissimilitude  of  our  com- 
merce (which  furnishes  raw  materials  to  employ  the  industry  of 
others,  in  exchange  for  articles  whereon  industry  has  been  ex- 
hausted) from  the  commerce  of  the  European  nations  (which  fur- 
nishes things  ready  wrought  only)  was  suggested  to  the  attention 
of  both  negotiators,  and  that  they  should  keep  their  nations  free 
to  make  particular  arrangements  with  ours,  by  communicating  to 
each  other  only  the  rights  of  the  most  favored  European  nation. 
Each  was  separately  sensible  of  the  importance  of  the  distinction  ; 
and  as  soon  as  it  was  proposed  by  the  one,  it  was  acceded  to  by 
the  other,  and  the  word  European  was  inserted  in  their  treaty.  It 
may  fairly  be  considered  then  as  the  rational  and  received  inter- 
pretation of  the  diplomatic  term,  "  gentis  amicissimas,"*  that  it 
has  not  in  view  a  nation  unknown  in  many  cases  at  the  time  of 
using  the  term,  and  so  dissimilar  in  all  cases  as  to  furnish  no 
ground  of  just  reclamation  to  any  nation. 

But  the  decisive  answer  is,  that  Spain  does  not  grant  us  the 
navigation  of  the  river.  We  have  an  inherent  right  to  it ;  and 
she  may  repel  the  demand  of  any  other  nation  by  candidly  stat- 
ing her  act  to  have  been,  what  in  truth  it  is,  a  recognition  only, 
and  not  a  grant. 

If  Spain  apprehends  that  other  nations  may  claim  access  to 
our  ports  in  the  Mississippi,  under  their  treaties  with  us,  giving 
them  a  right  to  come  and  trade  in  all  our  ports,  though  we  would 
not  choose  to  insert  an  express  stipulation  against  them,  yet  we 
shall  think  ourselves  justified  to  acquiesce  in  fact,  under  any 
regulations  Spain  may  from  time  to  time  establish  against  their 
admission. 

Should  Spain  renew  another  objection,  which  she  relied  much 
on  before  that  the  English  at  the  Revolution  treaty  could  not 
lede  to  us  what  Spain  had  taken  from  them  by  conquest,  and 
*  "  The  most  favored  nation." 


OFFIOIxVL     PAPERS.  5S5 

what  of  course  they  did  not  possess  themselves,  the  preceding 
observations  furnish  sufficient  matter  for  refutation. 

To  conclude  the  subjects  of  boundary  and  navigation,  each 
of  the  following  conditions  is  to  be  considered  by  the  commis- 
sioners as  a  sine  qua,  non. 

1.  That  our  southern  boundary  remain  established  at  the  com- 
pletion of  thirty-one  degrees  of  latitude  on  the  Mississippi,  and  so 
on  to  the  ocean,  as  has  been  before  described,  and  our  western 
one  along  the  middle  of  the  channel  of  the  Mississippi,  however 
that  channel  may  vary,  as  it  is  constantly  varying,  and  that  Spain 
cease  to  occupy  or  to  exercise  jurisdiction  in  any  part  northward 
or  eastward  of  these  boundaries. 

2.  That  our  right  be  acknowledged  of  navigating  the  Missis- 
sippi, in  its  whole  breadth  and  length,  from  its  source  to  the  sea, 
as  established  by  the  treaty  of  1763. 

3.  ^hat  neither  the  vessels,  cargoes,  or  the  persons  on  board, 
be  stopped,  visited,  or  subjected  to  the  payment  of  any  duty 
whatsoever ;  or,  if  a  visit  must  be  permitted,  that  it  be  under 
such  restrictions  as  to  produce  the  least  possible  inconvenience. 
But  it  should  be  altogether  avoided,  if  possible,  as  the  parent  of 
perpetual  broils. 

4.  That  such  conveniences  be  allowed  us  ashore,  as  may  ren- 
der our  right  of  navigation  practicable  and  under  such  regula- 
tions as  may  bond  fide  respect  the  preservation  of  peace  and  order 
alone,  and  may  not  have  in  object  to  embarrass  our  navigation, 
or  raise  a  revenue  on  it.  While  the  substance  of  this  article  is 
made  a  sine  qu }  non,  the  modifications  of  it  are  left  altogether 
to  the  discretion  and  management  of  the  commissioners. 

We  might  add,  as  a  fifth  sine  qui  non,  that  no  phrase  should 
be  admitted  in  the  treaty  which  could  express  or  imply  that  we 
take  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi  as  a  grant  from  Spain. 
But,  however  disagreeable  it  would  be  to  subscribe  to  such  a 
,  sentiment,  yet,  were  the  conclusion  of  a  treaty  to  hang  on  that 
single  objection,  it  would  be  expedient  to  waive  it,  and  to  meet, 
at  a  future  day,  the  consequences  of  any  resumption  they  may 


586  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

pretend  to  make,  rather  than  at  present,  those  of  a  separatiou 
without  coming  to  any  agreement. 

We  know  not  whether  Spain  has  it  in  idea  to  ask  a  compensatiou 
for  the  ascertainment  of  our  right. 

1.  In  the  first  place,  she  cannot  in  reason  ask  a  compensation 
for  yielding  what  we  have  a  right  to,  that  is  to  say,  the  navi- 
gation of  the  river,  and  the  conveniences  incident  to  it  of  natural 
right. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  we  have  a  claim  on  Spain  for  indem- 
nification for  nine  years'  exclusion  from  that  navigation,  and  a 
reimbursement  of  the  heavy  duties  (not  less  for  the  most  part 
than  15  per  cent,  on  extravagant  valuations)  levied  on  the  com- 
modities she  has  permitted  to  pass  to  New  Orleans.  The  re- 
linquishment of  this  will  be  no  unworthy  equivalent  for  any  ac- 
commodations she  may  indulge  us  with,  beyond  the  line  of  our 
strict  right.  And  this  claim  is  to  be  brought  into  view  in 
proper  time  and  manner,  merely  to  be  abandoned  in  consideration 
of  such  accommodations.  We  have  nothing  else  to  give  in  ex- 
change. For  as  to  territory,  we  have  neither  the  right  nor  the 
disposition  to  alienate  an  inch  of  what  belongs  to  any  member 
of  our  Union.  Such  a  proposition,  therefore,  is  totally  inad- 
missible, and  not  to  be  treated  of  for  a  moment. 

3.  On  the  former  conferences  on  the  navigation  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, Spain  chose  to  blend  with  it  the  subject  of  commerce  ;  and, 
accordingly,  specific  propositions  thereon  passed  between  the  ne- 
gotiators. Her  object,  then,  was  to  obtain  our  renuiiciation  of 
the  navigation,  and  to  hold  out  commercial  arrangements,  per- 
haps as  a  lure  to  us ;  perhaps,  however,  she  might  then,  and  may 
now,  really  set  a  value  on  commercial  arrangements  with  us,  and 
may  receive  them  as  a  consideration  for  accommodating  us  in 
the  navigation  ;  or,  may  wish  for  them,  to  have  the  appearance 
of  receiving  a  consideration.  Commercial  arrangements,  if  ac- 
ceptable in  themselves,  will  not  be  the  less  so  if  coupled  with 
those  relating  to  navigation  and  boundary.  We  have  only  to 
vake  care  that  they  be  acceptable  in  themselves. 

There  are  two  principles  which  may  be  proposed  as  the  basis 


OFFICIAL     PAPERS.  587 

of  a  commercial  treaty :  1.  That  of  exchanging  the  privileges 
of  native  citizens  ;  or, 

2.   Those  of  the  inost  favored  nation. 

1.  With  the  nations  holding  important  possessions  in  America^ 
we  are  ready  to  exchange  the  rights  of  native  citizens,  provided 
they  he  extended  through  the  whole  possessions  of  both  parties, 
but  the  propositions  of  Spain,  made  on  the  former  occasion,  (a 
copy  of  which  accompanies  this,)  were,  that  we  should  give  their 
merchants,  vessels,  and  productions,  the  privilege  of  native 
merchants,  vessels,  and  productions,  through  the  whole  of  our 
possessions,  and  they  give  the  same  to  ours  only  in  Spain  and 
the  Canaries.  This  is  inadmissible,  because  unequal;  and,  as  we 
believe  that  Spain  is  not  ripe  for  an  equal  exchange  on  this  basis, 
we  avoid  proposing  it. 

2.  Though  treaties,  which  merely  exchange  the  rights  of  the 
most  favored  nations,  are  not  without  all  inconvenience,  yet  they 
have  their  conveniences  also.  It  is  an  important  one,  that  they 
leave  each  party  free  to  make  what  internal  regulations  they 
please,  and  to  give  what  preferences  they  find  expedient  to  na- 
tive merchants,  vessels,  and  productions.  And  as  we  already 
have  treaties  on  this  basis,  with  France,  Holland,  Sweden,  and 
Prussia,  the  two  former  of  which  are  perpetual,  it  will  be  but 
small  additional  embarrassment  to  extend  it  to  Spain.  On  the 
contrary,  we  are  sensible  it  is  right  to  place  that  nation  on  the 
most  favored  footing,  whether  we  have  a  treaty  with  them  oi 
not,  and  it  can  do  us  no  harm  to  secure  by  treaty  a  reciprocation 
of  the  right. 

Of  the  four  treaties  before  mentioned,  either  the  French  or 
the  Prussian  might  be  taken  as  a  model.  But  it  would  be  use- 
less to  propose  the  Prussian  :  because  we  have  already  supposed 
that  Spain  would  never  consent  to  those  articles  which  give  to 
each  party  access  to  all  the  dominions  of  the  other  ;  and,  with- 
out this  equivalent,  we  would  not  agree  to  tie  our  own  hands  so 
materially  in  war,  as  would  be  done  by  the  23d  article,  which 
renounces  the  right  of  fitting  out  privateers,  or  of  capturing  mer- 
chant vessels.     The  French  treaty,  therefore,  is  proposed  as  the 


588  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

model.  In  this,  however,  the  following  changes  are  to  bu 
made. 

We  should  be  admitted  to  all  the  dominions  of  Spain,  to  which 
any  other  foreign  nation  is,  or  may  be  admitted. 

Article  5  being  an  exemption  from  a  particular  duty  in  France, 
will  of  course  be  omitted,  as  inapplicable  to  Spain. 

Article  8  to  be  omitted,  as  unnecessary  with  Morocco,  and  in- 
efficacious, and  little  honorable  with  any  of  the  Barbary  powers. 
Bat  it  may  furnish  occasion  to  sound  Spain  on  the  project  of  a 
convention  of  the  powers  at  war  with  the  Barbary  States,  to 
keep  up,  by  rotation,  a  constant  cruise  of  a  given  force  on  their 
coasts,  till  they  shall  be  compelled  to  renounce  forever,  and 
against  all  nations,  their  predatory  practices.  Perhaps  the  infi- 
delities of  the  Algerines  to  their  treaty  of  peace  with  Spain, 
though  the  latter  does  not  choose  to  break  openly,  may  induce 
her  to  subsidize  us  to  cruise  against  them  with  a  given  force. 

Article  9  and  10,  concerning  fisheries,  to  be  omitted,  as  in- 
applicable. 

Article  11.  The  first  paragraph  of  this  article,  respecting  the 
droit  Cfaubaine,  to  be  omitted ;  that  law  being  supposed  peculiar 
to  Prance. 

Article  17,  giving  asylum  in  the  ports  of  either  to  the  armed 
vessels  of  the  other,  with  the  prizes  taken  from  the  enemies  of 
that  other,  must  be  qualified  as  it  is  in  the  19th  article  of  the 
Prussian  treaty  ;  as  the  stipulation  in  the  latter  part  of  the  article, 
"  that  no  shelter  or  refuge  shall  be  given  in  the  ports  of  the  one 
to  such  as  shall  have  made  prize  on  the  subjects  of  the  other  of 
the  parties,"  would  forbid  us  in  case  of  a  war  between  France 
and  Spain,  to  give  shelter  in  our  ports  to  prizes  made  by  the  lat- 
ter on  the  former,  while  the  first  part  of  the  article  would  oblige 
us  to  shelter  those  made  by  the  former  on  the  latter — a  very 
dangerous  covenant,  and  which  ought  never  to  be  repeated  in 
any  other  instance. 

Article  29.  Consuls  should  be  received  in  all  the  ports  at  which 
the  vessels  of  either  party  may  be  received. 

Article  30,  concerning  free  ports  in    Europe    and  America. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  589 

Free  ports  in  the  Spanish  possessions  in  America,  and  particularly 
at  the  Havana,  San  Domingo,  in  the  island  of  that  name,  and 
St.  John  of  Porto  Rico,  are  more  to  be  desired  than  expected. 
It  can,  therefore,  only  he  recommended  to  the  best  endeavors 
of  the  commissioners  to  obtain  them.  It  will  be  something  to 
obtain  for  our  vessels,  flour,  &c.,  admission  to  those  ports  daring 
their  pleasure.  In  like  manner,  if  they  could  be  prevailed  on 
to  re-establish  our  right  of  catting  log-wood  in  the  bay  of  Cam- 
peachy,  on  the  footing  on  which  it  stood  before  the  treaty  of 
1763,  it  would  be  desirable,  and  not  endanger,  to  us,  any  contest 
with  the  English,  who,  by  the  Revolution  treaty,  are  restrained 
to  the  south-eastern  parts  of  Yucatan. 

Article  31.  The  act  of  ratification,  on  our  part,  may  require  a 
twelvemonth  from  the  date  of  the  treaty,  as  the  Senate  meets 
regularly  but  once  a  year  ;  and  to  return  it  to  Madrid,  for  ex- 
change, may  require  four  months  more.  It  would  be  better,  in- 
deed, if  Spain  would  send  her  ratification  to  be  exchanged  by 
her  representative  here. 

The  treaty  must  not  exceed  twelve  or  fifteen  years'  duration, 
except  the  clauses  relating  to  boundary,  and  the  navigation  of 
the  Mississippi,  which  must  be  perpetual  and  final.  Indeed, 
these  two  subjects  had  better  be  in  a  separate  instrument. 

There  might  have  been  mentioned  a  third  species  of  arrange- 
ment, that  of  making  special  agreements  on  every  special  subject 
of  commerce,  and  of  setting  a  tariff  of  duty  to  be  paid  on  each 
side,  on  every  particular  article  ;  but  this  would  require  in  our 
commissioners  a  very  minute  knowledge  of  our  commerce,  as 
it  is  impossible  to  foresee  every  proposition  of  this  kind  which 
might  be  brought  into  discussion,  and  to  prepare  them  for  it  by 
information  and  instruction  from  hence.  Our  commerce,  too,  is, 
as  yet,  rather  in  a  course  of  experiment,  and  the  channels  in 
which  it  will  ultimately  flow,  are  not  sufficiently  known  to  en- 
able us  to  provide  for  it  by  special  agreement.  Nor  have  the 
exigencies  of  our  new  government,  as  yet,  so  far  developed  them- 
selves, as  that  we  can  know  to  what  degree  we  may  or  must 
have  recourse   to  commerce  for  the  purposes  of  revenue.     No 


590  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

common  consideration,  therefore,  ought  to  induce  us,  as  yet,  to. 
arrangements  of  this  kind.  Perhaps  nothing  should  do  it  with 
any  nation,  short  of  the  privileges  of  natives  in  all  their  possess- 
ions, foreign  and  domestic. 

It  were  to  be  wished,  indeed,  that  some  positively  favorable 
stipulations  respecting  our  grain,  flour,  and  fish,  could  be  ob- 
iained,  even  on  our  giving  reciprocal  advantages  tc  some  other 
commodities  of  Spain,  say  her  wines  and  brandies. 

But,  1st.  If  we  quit  the  ground  of  the  most  favored  nation,  as 
to  certain  articles  for  our  convenience,  Spain  may  insist  on  doing 
the  same  for  other  articles  for  her  convenience,  and  thus  our 
commissioners  will  get  themselves  on  the  ground  of  a  treaty  of 
detail,  for  which  they  will  not  be  prepared. 

2d.  If  we  grant  favor  to  the  wines  and  brandies  of  Spain, 
then  Portugal  and  Spain  will  demand  the  same  ;  and  in  order  to 
create  an  equivalent,  Portugal  may  lay  a  duty  on  our  fish  and 
grain,  and  France,  a  prohibition  on  our  whale  oils,  the  removal 
of  which  will  be  proposed  as  an  equivalent. 

This  much,  however,  as  to  grain  and  flour,  may  be  attempted 
There  has,  not  long  since,  been  a  considerable  duty  laid  on 
tLsm  in  Spain.  This  was  while  a  treaty  on  the  subject  of  com- 
merce was  pending  between  us  and  Spain,  as  that  court  considers 
the  matter.  It  is  not  generally  thought  right  to  change  the  state 
of  things  pending  a  treaty  concerning  them.  On  this  consider- 
ation, and  on  the  motive  of  cultivating  our  friendship,  perhaps 
the  commissiouers  may  induce  them  to  restore  this  commodity  to 
the  footing  on  which  it  was,  on  opening  the  conferences  with 
Mr.  Gardoqui,  on  the  26th  day  of  July,  1785.  If  Spain  says, 
"  do  the  same  by  your  tonnage  on  our  vessels,"  the  answer  may 
be,  that  our  foreign  tonnage  affects  Spain  very  little,  and  other 
nations  very  much  ;  whereas  the  duty  on  flour  in  Spain  affects 
us  very  much,  and  other  nations  very  little.  Consequently, 
there  would  be  no  equality  in  reciprocal  relinquishment,  as  there 
had  been  none  in  the  reciprocal  innovation ;  and  Spain,  by  ia- 
sisting  on  this,  would,  in  fact,  only  be  aiding  the  interests  of  her 
rival  nations,  to  whom  we  should  be  forced  to  extend  the  same 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  591 

indulgence.  At  the  time  of  opening  the  conferences,  too,  we 
had,  as  yet,  not  erected  any  system  ;  our  government  itself  being 
not  yet  erected.  Innovation  then  was  unavoidable  on  cm-  part, 
if  it  be  innovation  to  establish  a  system.  We  did  it  on  fair  and 
general  ground ;  on  ground  favorable  to  Spain.  But  they  had  a 
system,  and,  therefore,  innovation  was  avoidable  on  their  part. 

It  is  known  to  the  commissioners  that  we  found  it  expedient 
to  ask  the  interposition  of  France,  lately,  to  bring  on  this  settle- 
ment of  our  boundary,  and  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi. 
How  far  that  interposition  has  contributed  to  produce  it,  is  un- 
certain. But  we  have  reason  to  believe  that  her  further  inter- 
ference would  not  produce  an  agreeable  effect  on  Spain.  The 
commissioners,  therefore,  are  to  avoid  all  further  communications 
on  the  subject  with  the  ministers  of  Prance,  giving  them  such 
explanations  as  may  preserve  their  good  dispositions.  But  if, 
ultimately,  they  shall  find  themselves  unable  to  bring  Spain  to 
agreement  on  the  subject  of  the  navigation  and  boundary,  the 
interposition  of  France,  as  a  mutual  friend,  and  the  guarantee  of 
our  limits,  is  then  to  be  asked,  in  whatever  light  Spain  nc^ay 
choose  to  consider  it. 

Should  the  negotiations  on  the  subject  of  navigation  and 
boundary  assume,  at  any  time,  an  unhopeful  aspect,  it  may  be 
proper  that  Spain  should  be  given  to  understand,  that,  if  they 
are  discontinued  without  coming  to  any  agreement,  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  cannot  be  responsible  for  the  longer 
forbearance  of  their  western  inhabitants.  At  the  same  time  the 
abandonment  of  the  negotiation  should  be  so  managed  as  that, 
without  engaging  us  to  a  further  suspension  of  the  exercise  of 
our  rights,  we  may  not  be  committed  to  resume  them  on  the  in- 
stant. The  present  turbid  situation  of  Europe  cannot  leave  us 
long  without  a  safe  occasion  of  resuming  our  territory  and  navi- 
gation, and  of  carving  for  ourselves  those  conveniences,  on  the 
shores,  which  may  facilitate  and  protect  the  latter  effectually  and 
permanently. 

We  had  a  right  to  expect  that,  pending  a  negotiation,  all 
things  would  have  remained  in  statu  quo,  and  that  Spain  would 


592  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

not  have  proceeded  to  possess  herself  of  other  parts  of  our  terri- 
tory. But  she  has  lately  taken  and  fortified  a  new  post  on  the 
Walnut  hills,  above  the  mouth  of  the  Yazoo  river,  and  far  above 
the  31st  degree.  This  garrison  ought  to  have  been  instantly 
dislodged  :  but  for  our  wish  to  be  in  friendship  with  Spain,  and 
our  confidence  in  her  assurances  "  to  bide  by  the  limits  establish.- 
ed  in  our  treaty  with  England,"  complaints  of  this  unfriendly  and 
uncandid  procedure  may  be  brought  forward  or  not,  as  the  com- 
missioners shall  see  expedient. 


XXVII. — Report  on  the  case  of  Charles  Russell  and  others, 
claiming  certain  lands. 

Jiinuary  21,  i7'.)-.'. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred,  by  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  the  letter  of  the  Governor  of  Virginia 
of  January  7th,  1792,  with  the  report  of  a  committee  of  the 
House  of  Delegates  of  that  commonwealth,  of  December  12th, 
1791,  and  resolution  of  the  General  Assembly  thereon,  of  De- 
cember 17th,  on  the  case  of  Charles  Russell,  late  an  oiRcer  in 
the  service  of  the  said  commonwealth,  stating  that  a  considera- 
ble part  of  the  tract  of  country  allotted  for  the  officers  and  sol- 
diers having  fallen  into  the  State  of  North  Carolina  on  the  exten- 
sion of  their  common  boundary,  the  legislature  of  the  said  State 
had,  in  1781,  passed  an  act  substituting  in  lieu  thereof  the  tract 
of  country  between  the  said  bonndarj''  aad  the  rivers  Mississippi, 
Ohio,  Tennessee^  and  subjecting  the  same  to  the  claims  of  their 
officers  and  soldiers.  That  the  said  Charles  Russell  had  in  con- 
sequence thereof,  directed  warrants  for  two  thousand  six  hundred 
and  sixty-six  and  two-thirds  acres  of  land  to  be  located  with- 
in the  said  tract  of  country  ;  but  that  the  same  belonging  to  the 
Chickasaws,  he  is  unable  to  obtain  a  right  thereto,  and  that  there 
are  other  oflicers  and  soldiers  of  the  said  commonwealth  under 
hke  circumstances : 

Repor's,  That  the  tract  of  country  before  described,  is  within 


OFFICIAL     PAPERS.  593 

the  boundaries  of  the  Chickasaw  nation  as  established   by  the 
treaty  of  Hopewell,  the  16th  day  of  January  1786. 

That  the  right  of  occupancy  of  the  said  lands,  therefore,  being 
vested  in  the  said  nation,  the  case  of  the  said  Charles  Russell, 
and  other  officers  and  soldiers  of  the  said  commonwealth,  be- 
comes proper  to  be  referred  to  the  legislature  of  the  United 
States  for  their  consideration. 


XXVIII. — Report  relative  to  negotiations  at  Madrid. 

Marcli  7,  1792. 

The  Secretary  of  State  having  understood,  from  communi- 
cations with  the  commissioners  of  his  Catholic  Majesty,  subse- 
quent to  that  which  he  reported  to  the  President  on  the  22d 
of  December  last,  that  though  they  considered  the  navigation 
of  the  Mississippi  as  the  principal  object  of  negotiation  be- 
tween the  two  countries,  yet  it  was  expected  by  their  court 
that  the  conferences  would  extend  to  all  the  matters  which  were 
under  negotiation  on  the  former  occasion  with  Mr.  Gardoqui, 
and  particularly  to  some  arrangements  of  commerce,  is  of  opin- 
ion, that,  to  renew  the  conferences  on  this  subject  also,  since 
they  desire  it,  will  be  but  friendly  and  respectful,  and  can  lead 
to  nothing  without  our  own  consent ;  and  that,  to  refuse  it,  might 
obstruct  the  settlement  of  the  questions  of  navigation  and  boun- 
dary ;  and,  therefore,  reports  to  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
the  following  observations  and  instructions  to  the  commissioners 
of  the  United  States,  appointed  to  negotiate  with  the  court  of 
Spain  a  treaty  or  convention  relative  to  the  navigation  of  the 
Mississippi ;  which  observations  and  instructions,  he  is  of  opinion, 
should  be  laid  before  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  and  their 
decision  be  desired,  whether  they  will  advise  and  consent  that 
a  treaty  be  entered  into  by  the  commissioners  of  the  United 
States  with  Spain  conformable  thereto. 

After  stating  to  our  commissioners  the  foundation  of  our  rights 
to  navigate  the  Mississippi,  and  to  hold  our  southern  boundary 

VOL.    VII.  38 


594  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

at  the  31st  degree  of  latitude,  and  that  each  of  these  is  to  be  a 
sine  qua  non,  it  is  proposed  to  add  as  follows  : 

On  the  former  conferences  on  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi, 
Spain  chose  to  blend  with  it  the  subject  of  commerce  ;  and,  ac- 
cordingly, specific  propositions  thereon  passed  between  the  ne- 
gotiators. Her  object  then  was  to  obtain  our  renunciation  of 
the  navigation,  and  to  hold  out  commercial  arrangements  perhaps 
as  a  lure  to  us.  Perhaps,  however,  she  might  then,  and  may 
now,  really  set  a  vaUie  on  commercial  arrangements  with  us, 
and  may  receive  them  as  a  consideration  for  accommodating  us 
in  the  navigation,  or  may  wish  for  them  to  have  the  appearance 
of  receiving  a  consideration.  Commercial  arrangements,  if  ac- 
ceptable in  themselves,  will  not  be  the  less  so,  if  coupled  with 
those  relating  to  navigation  and  boundary.  We  have  only  to 
take  care  that  they  be  acceptable  in  themselves. 


XXIX. — Opinion  on  the  Bill  apportioning  Representation. 

April  4.  1792. 

The  Constitution  has  declared  that  representatives  and  direct 
taxes  shall  be  apportioned  among  the  several  States  according  to 
their  respective  numbers.  That  the  number  of  representatives 
shall  not  exceed  one  for  every  30,000,  but  each  State  shall  have 
at  least  one  representative,  and  until  such  enumeration  shall  be 
made,  the  State  of  New  Hampshire  shall  be  entitled  to  choose  3, 
Massachusetts  2. 

The  bill  for  apportioning  representatives  among  the  several 
States,  without  explaining  any  principle  at  all,  which  may  show 
its  conformity  with  the  constitution,  to  guide  future  apportion- 
ments, says,  that  New  Hampshire  shall  have  3  members,  Massa- 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS. 


595 


chusetts  16,  &c.  We  are,  therefore,  to  find  by  experiment  what 
has  been  the  principle  of  the  bill ;  to  do  which,  it  is  proper  to 
state  the  federal  or  representable  numbers  of  each  State,  and  the 
numbers  allotted  to  them  by  the  bill.     They  are  as  follows : — 


Vermont      .     .     . 
New  Hampshire '. 
Massachusetts 
Rhode  Island 
Connecticut 
New  York   .    . 
New  Jersey     .     . 
Pennsylvania 
Delaware 
Maryland         .     . 
Virginia      .     .     . 
Kentucky   .     .     . 
North  Carolina 
South  Carolina 
Georgia 


Members. 

.   88,532 

.   3 

.  141,823 

.   5 

475,32'7  . 

.  16 

.   68,444 

.   2 

.  285,941 

.   8 

.  352,915  . 

.  11 

179,556  . 

.   6 

.  432,880  . 

.  14 

.   55,538  . 

2 

278,513  . 

.   9 

.  630,558  . 

21 

.   68,705  . 

.   2 

353,521 

.  11 

.  206,236  . 

.   6 

.   70,843  . 

.   2 

3,636,312 


120. 


It  happens  that  this  representation,  whether  tried  as  between 
great  and  small  States,  or  as  between  north  and  south,  yields,  in 
the  present  instance,  a  tolerably  just  result ;  and,  consequently, 
could  not  be  objected  to  on  that  ground,  if  it  were  obtained  by  the 
process  prescribed  in  the  Constitution  ;  but  if  obtained  by  any 
process  out  of  that,  it  becomes  arbitrary  and  inadmissible. 

The  1st  member  of  the  clause  of  the  Constitution  above  cited 
is  express,  that  representatives  shall  be  apportioned  among  the 
several  States  according  to  their  respective  numbers.  That  is  to 
say,  they  shall  be  apportioned  by  some  common  ratio — for  pro- 
portion, and  ratio,  are  equivalent  words ;  and,  in  the  definition 
of  proportion  among  numbers,  that  they  have  a  ratio  common 
to  all,  or  in  other  words,  a  common  divisor.  Now,  trial  will 
show  that  there  is  no  common  ratio,  or  divisor,  which,  applied  to 
the  numbers  of  each  State,  will  give  fo  them  the  number  of  rep- 
resentatives allotted  in  this  bill.  For  trying  the  several  ratios  of 
29,  30,  31,  32,  33,  the  allottments  would  be  as  follows : — 


596 


JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


29   30   31   32   33  The  Bill 


Vermont     .     .     . 

2 

2 

2 

2 

2 

3 

New  Hampshire 
Massachusetts 

4 
16 

4 
15 

4 
15 

4 

14 

4 
14 

6 
16 

Rhode  Island 

2 

2 

2 

2 

2 

2 

Connecticut    .     . 

8 

7 

7 

7 

7 

8 

Kew  York 

12 

11 

11 

11 

10 

11 

Hew  Jersey    .     .     . 

6 

5 

5 

5 

5 

6 

Pennsylvania 

14 

14 

13 

13 

13 

14 

Delaware        .     . 

1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

2 

Maryland       .     .     . 
Virginia         .     .     . 

9 
21 

9 
21 

8 
20 

8 
19 

8 
19 

9 

21 

Kentucky 

North  Carolina  .     . 

2 
12 

2 
11 

2 
U 

2 
11 

2 
10 

2 
12 

South  Carolina  . 

7 

6 

6 

6 

6 

7 

Georgia      .     .     .     . 

2 

2 

2 

2 

2 

2 

118  112  109  107  105 


120 


Then  the  bill  reverses  the  constitutional  precept,  because,  by 
it,  representatives  are  not  apportioned  among  the  several  States, 
according  to  their  respective  numbers. 

It  will  be  said  that,  though,  for  taxes,  there  may  always  be 
found  a  divisor  which  will  apportion  them  among  the  States  ac- 
cording to  numbers  exactly,  without  leaving  any  remainder,  yet, 
for  representatives,  there  can  be  no  such  common  ratio,  or  divisor, 
which,  applied  to  the  several  numbers,  will  divide  them  exactly, 
without  a  remainder  or  fraction.  I  answer,  then,  that  taxes  must 
be  divided  exactly,  and  representatives  as  nearly  as  the  nearest  ratio 
will  admit ;  and  the  fractions  must  be  neglected,  because  the 
Constitution  calls  absolutely  that  there  be  an  apportionment  or 
common  ratio,  and  if  any  fractions  result  from  the  operation,  it 
has  left  them  unprovided  for.  In  fact  it  could  not  but  foresee 
that  such  fractions  would  result,  and  it  meant  to  submit  to  them. 
It  knew  they  would  be  in  favor  of  one  part  of  the  Union  at  one 
time,  and  of  another  at  another,  so  as,  in  the  end,  to  balance  oc- 
casional irregularities.  But  instead  of  such  a  single  common 
ratio,  or  uniform  divisor,  as  prescribed  by  the  Constitution,  the 
bill  has  applied  two  ratios,  at  least,  to  the  different  States,  to  wit, 
that  of  30.026  to  the  seven  following  :  Rhode  Island,  New  York, 
Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  Virginia,  Kentucky  and  Georgia;  and 
that  of  27,770  to  the  eight  others,  namely:  Vermont,  New 
Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  New  Jersey,  Delaware 
North  Carolina,  and  South  Carolina,  as  follows  : — 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS. 

Rhode  Island    .    . 

68,444  divided 

ty 

30,026 

gives 

2 

New  York    .     .     . 

352,915 

(( 

i( 

11 

Pennsylvauia    .     . 

.     482,880 

11 

u 

14 

Maryland      .     .     . 

.     278,513 

i. 

11 

S 

Virginia  .... 

630,558 

(1 

11 

21 

Kentucky     .     .     . 

.       58,705 

• 

u 

11 

2 

Georgia    .     .     . 

70,843 

U 

tf 

It 

2 

Vermont       .     .     . 

85,532  divided 

by 

27,770 

gives 

3 

New  Hampshire    . 

141,823 

il 

(( 

CI 

6 

Massachusetts  .  .  . 

476,327 

(t 

(f 

(( 

16 

Connecticut  .     .     . 

.     235,941 

If 

II 

(t 

8 

New  Jersey      .     . 

179,556 

11 

n 

l( 

6 

Delaware 

55,538 

tl 

II 

(( 

2 

North  Carolina 

353,521 

tt 

II 

(( 

12 

South  Carolina 

208,236 

u 

(( 

(( 

7 

597 


And  if  two  ratios  be  applied,  then  fifteen  may,  and  the  distri-. 
bution  become  arbitrary,  instead  of  being  apportioned  to  num- 
bers. Another  member  of  the  clause  of  the  Constitution  which 
has  been  cited,  says  "  the  number  of  representatives  shall  not  ex- 
ceed one  for  every  30,000,  but  each  State  shall  have  at  least  one 
representative."  This  last  phrase  proves  that  it  had  no  contem- 
plation that  all  fractions,  or  numbers  below  the  commoti  ratio 
were  to  be  unrepresented  ;  and  it  provides  especially  that  in  the 
case  of  a  State  whose  whole  number  shall  be  below  the  common 
ratio,  one  representative  shall  be  given  to  it.  This  is  the  single 
instance  where  it  allows  representation  to  any  smaller  number 
than  the  common  ratio,  and  by  providing  especially  for  it  in  this, 
shews  it  was  understood  that,  without  special  provision,  the 
smaller  number  would  in  this  case,  be  involved  in  the  general 
principle.  The  first  phrase  of  the  above  citations,  that  "the 
number  of  representatives  shall  not  exceed  one  for  every  30,000, 
is  violated  by  this  bill  which  has  given  to  eight  States  a  number 
exceeding  one  for  every  30,000,  to  wit,  one  for  every  27,770. 

In  answer  to  this,  it  is  said  that  this  phrase  may  mean 
either  the  30,000  in  each  State,  or  the  30,000  in  the  whole 
Union,  and  that  in  the  latter  case  it  serves  only  to  find  the 
amount  of  the  whole  representation ;  which,  in  the  present  state 
of  population,  is  120  members.  Suppose  the  phrase  might  bear 
both  meanings,  which  will  common  sense  apply  to  it  ?  Which 
did  the  universal  understanding  of  our  country  apply  to  it  ? 
Which  did  the  Senate  and  Representatives  apply  to  it  during  the 
pendency  of  the  first  bill,  and  even  till  an  advanced  stage  of  this 


598 


JEFFERSON'S.    WORKS. 


second  bill,  when  an  ingenious  gentleman  found  out  the  doctrine 
of  fractions,  a  doctrine  so  difficult  and  inobvious,  as  to  be  re- 
jected at  first  sight  by  the  very  persons  who  afterwards  became 
its  most  zealous  advocates  ? 

The  phrase  stands  in  the  midst  of  a  number  of  others,  every 
one  of  which  relates  to  States  in  their  separate  capacity.  Will 
not  plain  common  sense  then,  xmderstand  it,  like  the  rest  of  its 
context,  to  relate  to  States  in  their  separate  capacities  ? 

But  if  the  phrase  of  one  for  30,000 "is  only  meant  to  give  the 
aggregate  of  representatives,  and  not  at  all  to  influence  their  ap- 
portionment among  the  States,  then  the  120  being  once  found, 
in  order  to  apportion  them,  we  must  recur  to  the  former  rule 
which  does  it  according  to  the  numbers  of  the  respective  States  ; 
and  we  must  take  the  nearest  common  divisor,  as  the  ratio  of 
distribution,  that  is  to  say,  that  divisor  which,  applied  to  every 
State,  gives  to  them  such  numbers  as,  added  together,  come  near- 
est to  120.  This  nearest  common  ratio  will  be  found  to  be 
28,658,  and  will  distribute  119  of  the  120  members,  leaving 
only  a  single  residuary  one.  It  will  be  found  too  to  place  96,648 
fractional  numbers  in  the  eight  northernmost  States,  and  106,582 
in  the  seven  southernmost.     The  following  table  shows  it : 


Ratio, 

28,658 

Fraction. 

Vermont      .     .     . 

85,832 

2 

27,816 

New  Hampshire    . 

.     141,823 

4 

26,391 

Mas.«achu3etts 

.     .     475,327 

16 

13,599 

Rhode  Island    .     . 

.     .       68,444 

2 

10,728 

Connecticut     .     . 

.     .     235,941 

8 

5,u77 

New  York    . 

.     .     352,915 

12 

6,619 

New  Jersey      .     . 

.     .     119,856 

6 

6,408 

Pennsylvania 

.     .     432,880 

15 

10 

Delaware     . 

55,538 

1 

26,680 

Maryland         .     . 

.     278,503 

9 

18,191 

Virginia            .     . 

.     .     630,558 

21 

24,540 

Kentucky    .     .     . 

.       68,705 

2 

10,989 

North  Carolina     . 

.     .     353,521 

12 

7,225 

South  Carolina     . 

.     .     206,236 

7 

4,230 

Virginia      .    .     . 

.       70,843 

2 

23,137 

3,636,312 

119 

202,230 

96,648 


105,582 
202,230 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  intention,  the  effect  of  neglect- 
ing the  nearest  divisor,  (which  leaves  but  one  residuary  mem- 
ber,) and  adopting  a  distant  one  (which  leaves  eight),  is  merely 
to  take  a  member  from  New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  each,  and 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS. 


599 


give  them  to  Vermont  and  New  Hampshire.  But  it  will  be 
said,  this  is  giving  more  than  one  for  30,000.  True,  but  has  it 
not  been  just  said  that  the  one  for  30,000  is  prescribed  only  to 
fix  the  aggregate  number,  and  that  we  are  not  to  mind  it  when 
we  come  to  apportion  them  among  the  States?  That  for  this 
we  must  recur  to  the  former  rule  which  distributes  them  accord- 
ing to  the  numbers  in  each  State  ?  Besides  does  not  the  bill  it- 
self apportion  among  seven  of  the  States  by  the  ratio  of  27,770  ? 
which  is  much  more  than  one  for  30,000. 

Where  a  phrase  is  susceptible  of  two  meanings,  we  ought  cer- 
tainly to  adopt  that  which  will  bring  upon  us  the  fewest  incon- 
veniences.    Let  us  weigh  those  resulting  from  both  constructions. 

From  that  giving  to  each  State  a  member  for  every  30,000  in 
that  State  results  the  single  inconvenience  that  there  may  be 
large  portions  unrepresented,  but  it  being  a  mere  hazard  on  which 
State  this  will  fall,  hazard  will  equalize  it  in  the  long  run. 
From  the  others  result  exactly  the  same  inconvenience.  A  thou- 
sand cases  may  be  imagined  to  prove  it.  Take  one.  Suppose 
eight  of  the  States  had  45,000  inhabitants  each,  and  the  other 
seven  44,999  each,  that  is  to  say  each  one  less  than  each  of  the 
others.  The  aggregate  would  be  674,993,  and  the  number  of 
representatives  at  one  for  30,000  of  the  aggregate,  would  be  22. 
Then,  after  giving  one  member  to  each  State,  distribute  the 
seven  residuary  members  among  the  seven  highest  fractions,  and 
though  the  difference  of  population  be  only  an  unit,  the  repre- 
sentation would  be  the  double. 


1st. 45,000 

2d 45,000 

Sd. 45,000 

4th 45,000 

5th 45,000 

6th 45,000 

'■th .  •  •  45,000 

th •  45,000 

th 44,999 

10th 44,999 

nth 44,999 

12th.          44,999 

13th •  •  44,999 

14th 44,999 

loth 

674.993 


TYactions. 
15,000 
15,000 
15,000 
15,000 
15,000 
15,000 
15,000 
15,000 
14,999 
14,999 
14.999 
14,999 
14,999 
14,999 
14,999 


600  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Here  a  single  inhabitant  the  more  would  count  as  30,000.  Noi 
is  this  case  imaginable,  only  it  will  resemble  the  real  one  when- 
ever the  fractions  happen  to  be  pretty  equal  through  the  whole 
States.  The  numbers  of  our  census  happen  by  accident  to  give 
the  fractions  all  very  small,  or  very  great,  so  as  to  produce  the 
strongest  case  of  inequality  that  could  possibly  have  occurred, 
and  which  may  never  occur  again.  The  probability  is  that  the 
fractions  will  generally  descend  gradually  from  29,999  to  1. 
The  inconvenience  then  of  large  unrepresented  fractions  attends 
both  constructions ;  and  while  the  most  obvious  construction  is 
liable  to  no  other,  that  of  the  bill  incurs  many  and  grievous  ones. 

1.  If  you  permit  the  large  fraction  in  one  State  to  choose  a 
representative  for  one  of  the  small  fractions  in  another  State,  you 
take  from  the  latter  its  election,  which  constitutes  real  representa- 
tion, and  substitute  a  virtual  representation  of  the  disfranchised 
fractions,  and  the  tendency  of  the  doctrine  of  virtual  representa- 
tion has  been  too  well  discussed  and  appreciated  by  reasoning 
and  resistance  on  a  former  great  occasion  to  need  development  now. 

2.  The  bill  does  not  say  that  it  has  given  the  residuary  repre- 
sentatives to  the  greatest  fraction  ;  though  in  fact  it  has  done 
so.  It  seems  to  have  avoided  establishing  that  into  a  rule,  lest 
it  might  not  suit  on  another  occasion.  Perhaps  it  may  be  found 
the  next  time  more  convenient  to  distribute  them  among  the 
smaller  States ;  at  another  time  among  the  larger  States  ;  at 
other  times  according  to  any  other  crotchet  which  ingenuity  may 
invent,  and  the  combinations  of  the  day  give  strength  to  carry ; 
or  they  may  do  it  arbitrarily  by  open  bargains  and  cabal.  In 
short  this  construction  introduces  into  Congress  a  scramble,  or  a 
vendue  for  the  surplus  members.  It  generates  waste  of  time, 
hot  blood,  and  may  at  some  time,  when  the  passions  are  high, 
extend  a  disagreement  between  the  two  Houses,  to  the  perpetual 
loss  of  the  thing,  as  happens  now  in  the  Pennsylvania  assembly  ; 
whereas  the  otner  construction  reduces  the  apportionment  al-- 
ways  to  an  arithmetical  operation,  about  which  no  two  men  can 
ever  possibly  differ. 

3.  It  leaves  in  full  force  the  violation  of  the  precept  which 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  601 

declares  that  representatives  shall  be  apportioned  among  the 
States  according  to  their  numbers,  i.  e.,  by  some  common  ratio. 
Viewing  this  bill  either  as  a  violation  of  the  constitution,  or 
as  giving  an  inconveiiient  exposition  of  its  words,  is  it  a  cast, 
wherein  the  President  ought  to  interpose  his  negative  ?  I  think 
it  is. 

1.  The  non-user  of  his  negative  begins  already  to  excite  a 
belief  that  no  President  will  ever  venture  to  use  it ;  and  has, 
consequently,  begotten  a  desire  to  raise  up  barriers  in  the  State 
legislatures  against  Congress,  throwing  off  the  control  of  the 
constitution. 

2.  It  can  never  be  used  more  pleasingly  to  the  public,  than  in 
the  protection  of  the  constitution. 

3.  No  invasions  of  the  constitution  are  fimdamentally  so  dan- 
gerous as  the  tricks  played  on  their  own  numbers,  apportionment, 
and  other  circumstances  respecting  themselves,  and  affecting 
their  legal  qualifications  to  legislate  for  the  union. 

4.  The  majorities  by  which  this  bill  has  been  carried  (to  wit: 
of  one  in  the  Senate  and  two  in  the  Representatives)  show  how 
divided  the  opinions  were  there. 

5.  The  whole  of  both  houses  admit  the  constitution  will  bear 
the  other  exposition,  whereas  the  minorities  in  both  deny  it  will 
bear  that  of  the  bill. 

6.  The  application  of  any  one  ratio  is  intelligible  to  the  peo- 
ple, and  will,  therefore  be  approved,  whereas  the  complex  opera- 
tions of  this  bill  will  never  be  comprehended  by  them,  and 
though  they  may  acquiesce,  they  cannot  approve  what  they  do 
not  understand. 


XXX. — Opinion  relative  to  a  case  of  recapture,  by  citizens  of 
the  United  States,  of  slaves  escaped  into  Florida,  and  of  an 
American  captain  enticing  French  slaves  from  St.  Domingo. 

Ueceitibei-  S.  ITUii 

Complaint  has  been  made  by  the   Representatives  of  Spain 
that  certain  individuals  of  Georgia  entered  the  State  of  Florida, 


602  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

and  without  any  application  to  the  Government,  seized  and  car- 
ried into  Georgia,  certain  persons,  whom  they  claimed  to  be  their 
slaves.  This  aggression  was  thought  the  more  of,  as  there  exists 
a  convention  between  that  government  and  the  United  States 
against  receiving  fugitive  slaves. 

The  minister  of  Prance  has  complained  that  the  master  of  an 
American  vessel,  while  lying  within  a  harbor  of  St.  Domingo, 
having  enticed  some  negroes  on  board  his  vessel,  under  pretext 
of  employment,  bought  them  off,  and  sold  them  in  Georgia  as 
slaves. 

1.  Has  the  general  government  cognizance  of  these  offences? 
2.  If  it  has,  is  any  law  already  provided  for  trying  and  punish- 
ing them  ? 

1.  The  Constitution  says  "  Congress  shall  have  power  to  lay 
and  collect  taxes,  duties,  imposts,  and  excises,  to  pay  the  debts 
(fcc,  provide  for  the  common  defence  and  general  welfare  of  the 
United  States."  I  do  not  consider  this  clause  as  reaching  the 
point.  I  suppose  its  meaning  to  be,  that  Congress  may  collect 
taxes  for  the  purpose  of  providing  for  the  general  welfare,  in 
those  cases  wherein  the  Constitution  empowers  them  to  act  for 
the  general  welfare.  To  suppose  that  it  was  meant  to  give  them 
a  distinct  substantive  power,  to  do  any  act  which  might  tend  to 
the  general  welfare,  is  to  render  all  the  enumerations  useless, 
and  to  make  their  powers  unhmited.  We  must  seek  the  power 
therefore  in  some  other  clause  of  the  Constitution.  It  says  further, 
that  Congress  shall  have  power  to  "  define  and  punish  piracies 
and  felonies  committed  on  the  high  seas,  and  offences  against 
the  law  of  nations."  These  offences  were  not  committed  on 
the  high  seas,  and  consequently  not  within  that  branch  of  the 
clause.  Are  they  against  the  law  of  nations,  taken  as  it  may  be 
in  its  whole  extent,  as  founded,  1st,  in  nature  ;  2d.  usage  ;  3d, 
convention  ?  So  much  may  be  said  in  the  affirmative,  that  the 
legislators  ought  to  send  the  case  before  the  judiciary  for  dis- 
cussion ;  and  the  rather,  when  it  is  considered  that  unless  the 
offenders  can  be  punished  under  this  clause,  there  is  no  other 
which  goes  directly  to  their  case,  and  consequently  our  peace 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  603 

with  foreign  nations  will  be  constantly  at  the  discretion  of  in- 
dividuals. 

2.  Have  the  legislators  sent  this  question  before  the  Courts 
by  any  law  already  provided  ?  The  act  of  1789,  chapter  20, 
section  9,  says  the  district  courts  shall  have  cognizance  concur- 
rent with  the  courts  of  the  several  States,  or  the  circuit  courts, 
of  all  causes,  where  an  alien  sues  for  a  tort  only,  in  violation  of 
the  law  of  nations :  but  what  if  there  be  no  alien  whose  interest 
is  such  as  to  support  an  action  for  the  tort? — which  is  precisely 
the  case  of  the  aggression  on  Florida.  If  the  act  in  describing 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Courts,  had  given  them  cognizance  of  pro- 
ceedings by  way  of  indictment  or  information  against  offenders 
under  the  law  of  nations,  for  the  public  wrong,  and  on  the  public 
behalf,  as  well  as  to  an  individual  for  the  special  tort,  it  would 
have  been  the  thing  desired.  i 

The  same  act,  section  13,  says,  the  "  Supreme  Court  shall  have 
exclusively  all  such  jurisdiction  of  suits  or  proceedings  against  am- 
bassadors, or  other  public  ministers,  or  their  domestics  or  domestic 
servants,  as  a  court  of  law  can  have  or  exercise  consistently,  with 
the  law  of  nations." — Still  this  is  not  the  case,  no  ambassador,  (fcc, 
being  concerned  here.  I  find  nothing  else  in  the  law  applicable  to 
this  question,  and  therefore  presume  the  case  is  still  to  be  provided 
for,  and  that  this  may  be  done  by  enlarging  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  courts,  so  that  they  may  sustain  indictments  and  informations 
on  the  public  behalf,  for  offences  against  the  law  of  nations. 

[A  note  added  by  Mr.  Jefferson  at  a  later  period.] 
On  further  examination  it  does  appear  that  the  11th  section  of 
the  judiciary  act  above  cited  gives  to  the  circuit  courts  exclu- 
sively, cognizance  of  all  crimes  and  offences  cognizable  under 
the  authority  of  the  United  States,  and  not  otherwise  provided  for. 
This  removes  the  difficulty,  however,  but  one  step  further ; — for 
questions  then  arise,  1st.  What  is  the  peculiar  character  of  the  of- 
fence in  question  ;  to  wit,  treason,  felon jr,  misdemeanor,  or  trespass  ? 
2d.  What  is  its  specific  punishment — capital  or  what?  3d. 
Whence  is  the  venue  to  come  ? 


604 


JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


XXXI. — Report  on  Assays  at  the  Mint,  communicated  to  the 
House  of  Representatives,  January  8,  1793. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred,  by  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  the  resolution  of  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives of  the  29th  of  November,  1792,  on  the  subject  of  ex- 
periments of  France,  England,  Spain,  and  Portugal,  reports : 

That  assays  and  experiments  have  been,  accordingly,  made  at 
the  mint,  by  the  director,  and  under  his  care  and  inspection,  of 
sundry  gold  and  silver  coins  of  France,  England,  Spain,  and 
Portugal,  and  of  the  quantity  of  fine  gold  and  alloy  in  each  of 
them,  and  the  specific  gravities  of  those  of  gold  given  in  by 
the  director,  a  copy  of  which,  and  of  the  letter  covering  it,  are 
contained  in  the  papers  marked  A  and  B. 

A. 

January  1,  1793. 
Sm: — I  have,  herewith,  enclosed  the  result  of  our  assays,  &e.,  of  the  coins  of 
France,  England,  Spain,  and  Portugal.     In  the  course  of  the  experiments,  a  very 
small  source  of  error  was  detected,  too  late  for  the  present  occasion,  but  which 
will  be  carefully  guarded  against  in  future. 

I  am,  with  the  most  perfect  esteem,  your  most  obedient  hnmble  servant, 

DAVID  EITTENHOUSE,  Director  of  the  Mint. 
Thomas  Jefferson,  Secretary  of  State. 


B. 

Assay  of  gold  coins. 


Date 

In  24 

grains. 

Specific 

Fine  gold. 

Alloy. 

gravity. 

grs.    :12  pia. 

grs.    3-2  pts. 

■17'26 

21      10 

2      16 

17.48 

1734 
■    1742 

21      19 

2     13 

17.38 

French  guineas, 

21      26 

2     06 

17.58 

1  1753 

21      03 

2     29 

17.23 

1.1775 

21     22 

2     10 

17.57 

f  1766 
-1  1789 

21      22 

2     10 

17.51 

Double    do.  - 

21     22 

2     10 

17.50 

L1730 

21     26 

2     07 

17.67 

OFFICIAL    PAPERS. 


605 


Date. 

In  24 

grains. 

Specific 

Fine 

gold. 

Alloy. 

gravity. 

gra. 

'i  pts. 

grs.    32  pts. 

'1776 

21 

21 

2      11 

17.53 

Spanish  pistoles,    - 

1780 
1786 

21 
21 

00 
18 

3     00 
2     14 

17.57 
17.63 

1788 

21 

02 

2     30 

17.00 

ri75o 

21 

28 

2     04 

17.78 

1777 

•21 

31 

2     01 

17,76 

.      English  guineas, 

1785 
17S8 

21 
21 

30 
31 

2     02 
2     01 

17.78 
17.79 

1789 

22 

03 

1      29 

17.78 

[1791 

22 

01 

1     31 

17.74 

ri739 

21 

31 

2     01 

17.63 

Half  jobanues  of 
Portugal, 

1770 
1776 
1785 

22 

22 
21 

05 

05 
30 

1     27 

1  27 

2  02 

17.78 
17.87 
17.68 

1788 

21 

31 

2     01 

17.78 

Silver  coins. 


In  12  ounces. 

Date. 

Fine  silver. 

Alloy 

oz. 

dwis. 

grs. 

oz. 

dwts. 

grs. 

English  half-crown  of  William  III. 

10 

19 

09t 

1 

OO 

m. 

English  shilling, 

1787 

11 

00 

02i 

0 

19 

2U 

French  crown, 

1791 

10 

16 

00 

04 

00 

Do.     half-crown, 

1739 

10 

17 

00 

03 

00 

Do. 

1792 

10 

16 

19 

03 

05 

f  1772 

10 

15 

05 

04 

19 

Spanish  dollar  of 

1782 

10 

14 

02i 

05 

2U 

1  1790 

10 

14 

00 

06 

00 

[1791 

10 

14 

2U 

(15 

02.1 

Mint,  January  7,  1793. 
Assayed  by  Mr.  David  Ott,  under  my  inspection,  at  the  mint,  in  pursuance  of 
8  resolution  of  Congress  of  November  29, 1792.    I  have  added  the  specific  gravity 
of  each  piece  of  gold  coin.  DAVID  RITTEJS'HOUSE,  Director  of  the  Mint. 


XXXII. — Report  on  the  petition  of  John  Rogers,  relative  to 
certain  lands  on  the  north-east  side  of  the  Tennessee. 

February  16,  1793. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  whom  was  referred,  by  the  House 
of  Representatives  of  the  United  States,  the  petition  of  John 
Rogers,  setting  forth,  that  as  an  officer  of  the  State  of  Virginia, 


606  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

during  the  last  war,  he  became  entitled  to  two  thousand  acres  of 
lands  on  the  north-east  side  of  the  Tennessee,  at  its  confluence 
with  the  Ohio,  and  to  two  thousand  four  hundred  acres  in  differ- 
ent parcels,  between  the  same  river  and  the  Mississippi,  all  of 
them  within  the  former  limit  of  Virginia,  which  lands  were  al- 
lotted to  him  under  an  act  of  the  Legislature  of  Virginia,  before 
its  deed  of  cession  to  the  United  States  ;  that  by  the  treaty  of 
Hopewell,  in  1786,  the  part  of  the  country  comprehending  these 
lands  was  ceded  to  the  Chickasaw  Indians ;  and  praying  compen- 
sation for  the  same, 

Reports,  That  the  portion  of  country  comprehending  the  said 
parcels  of  land,  has  been  ever  understood  to  be  claimed,  and  has 
certainly  been  used,  by  the  Chickasaw  and  Cherokee  Indians  for 
their  hunting  grounds.  The  Chickasaws  holding  exclusively 
from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Tennessee,  and  extending  their  claim 
across  that  river,  eastward! y,  into  the  claims  of  the  Cherokees, 
their  conterminous  neighbors. 

That  the  government  of  Virginia  was  so  well  apprized  of  the 
rights  of  the  Chickasaws  to  a  portion  of  country  within  the  limit 
of  that  State,  that  about  the  year  1780,  they  instructed  their 
agent,  residing  with  the  southern  Indians,  to  avail  himself  of 
the  first  opportunity  which  should  offer,  to  purchase  the  same 
from  them,  and  that,  therefore,  any  act  of  that  Legislature  allot- 
ting these  lands  to  their  officers  and  soldiers  must  probably  have 
been  passed  on  the  supposition,  that  a  purchase  of  the  Indian 
right  could  be  made,  which  purchase,  however,  has  never  been 
made. 

That,  at  the  treaty  of  Hopewell,  the  true  boundary  between 
the  United  States  on  the  one  part,  and  the  Cherokees  and  Chick- 
asaws on  the  other,  was  examined  into  and  acknowledged,  and 
oy  consent  of  all  parties,  the  unsettled  limits  between  the  Chero- 
kees and  Chickasaws  were  at  the  same  time  ascertained,  and  in 
that  part  particularly,  were  declared  to  be  the  highlands  dividing 
the  waters  of  the  Cumberland  and  Tennessee,  whereby  the 
whole  of  the  petitioner's  "ocations  were  found  to  be  in  the  Chick- 
asaw country. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  607 

That  the  right  of  occupation  of  the  Cherokees  and  Chiokasaws 
in  this  portion  of  the  country,  having  never  been  obtained  by 
the  United  States,  or  those  under  whom  they  claim  it,  cannot  be 
said  to  have  been  ceded  by  them  at  the  treaty  of  Hopewell,  but 
only  recognized  as  belonging  to  the  Chickasaws,  and  retained  to 
them. 

That  the  country  south  of  the  Ohio  was  formerly  contested 
between  the  Six  Nations  and  the  southern  Indians  for  hunting 
grounds. 

That  the  Six  Nations  sold  for  a  valuable  consideration  to  the 
then  government  their  right  to  that  country,  describing  it  as  ex- 
tending from  the  mouth  of  the  Tennessee  upwards.  That  no 
evidence  can  at  this  time  and  place  be  procured,  as  to  the  right 
of  the  southern  Indians,  that  is  to  say,  the  Cherokees  and  Chick- 
asaws, to  the  same  country  ;  but  it  is  believed  that  they  volun- 
tarily withdrew  their  claims  within  the  Cumberland  river,  retain- 
ing their  right  so  far,  which  consequently  could  not  be  conveyed 
from  them,  or  to  us,  by  the  act  of  the  Six  Nations,  unless  it  be 
proved  that  the  Six  Nations  had  acquired  a  right  to  the  country 
between  the  Cumberland  and  Tennessee  .rivers  by  conquest 
over  the  Cherokees  and  Chickasaws,  which  it  is  believed  cannot 
be  proved. 

That,  therefore,  the  locations  of  the  petitioner  must  be  con- 
sidered as  made  within  the  Indian  temtory,  and  insusceptible  of 
being  reduced  into  his  possession,  till  the  Indian  right  be  pur- 
chased. 

That  this  places  him  on  the  same  footing  with  Charles  Russell 
and  others,  officers  of  the  same  State,  who  had  located  their 
bounty  lands  in  like  manner,  within  the  Chickasaw  lines,  whose 
case  -n^as  laid  before  the  House  of  Representatives  of  the  United 
States  at  the  last  sessioo,  and  remains  undecided  on ;  and  that 
the  same  and  no  other  measure  should  be  dealt  to  this  petitioner 
which  shall  be  provided  for  them. 


608  .TEFFEESON'S    "WORKS. 


XXXIII. — Report  relative  to  the  Boundaries  of  the  hands  be- 
tween the  Ohio  and  the  Lakes,  acquired  by  treaties  from  the 
Indians. 

Mardi  10.  1793 

The  Secretary  of  State,  according  to  instructions  received 
from  the  President  of  the  United  States, 

Reports,  That,  for  the  information  of  the  commissioners  ap- 
pointed to  treat  with  the  western  Indians,  he  has  examined  the 
several  treaties  entered  into  with  them  subsequent  to  the  declar- 
ation of  Independence,  and  relating  to  the  lands  between  the 
Ohio  and  the  lakes,  and  also  the  extent  of  the  grants,  reserva- 
tions, and  appropriations  of  the  same  lands,  made  either  by  the 
United  States,  or  by  individual  States  within  the  same  period, 
and  finds  that  the  lands  obtained  by  the  said  treaties,  and  not  so 
granted,  reserved,  or  appropriated,  are  bounded  by  the  following 
lines,  to  wit : 

Northwardly.  By  a  line  running  from  the  fork  of  the  Tusca- 
rora's  branch  of  the  Muskingum,  at  the  crossing-place  above 
Fort  Lawrence.  Westwardly  (towards  the  portage  of  the  Big- 
Miami)  to  the  main  branch  of  that  river,  then  down  the  Miami, 
to  the  fork  of  that  river  next  below  the  old  fort,  which  was 
taken  by  the  French  in  1752,  thence  due  west  to  the  river  De  la 
Pause,  and  down  that  river  to  the  Wabash ;  which  lines  were 
established  with  the  Wiandots,  Delawares,  Chippawas,  and  Otta- 
was,  by  the  treaty  of  Fort  Mcintosh,  and  with  the  Shawanese  by 
that  of  the  Great  Miami. 

Westwardly.     By  the  bounds  of  the  Wabash  Indians. 

Eastwardly.  By  the  million  of  acres  appropriated  to  military 
claimants,  by  the  resolution  of  Congress  of  October  23,  1787,  and 
lying  ill  the  angle  between  the  seventh  range  of  townships  count- 
ed westwardly,  from  the  Pennsylvania  boundary,  and  the  tenth 
range  counted  from  the  Ohio  northwardly  along  the  said  seventh, 
which  million  of  acres  may  perhaps  extend  westwardly,  so  as  to 
comprehend  the  twelfth  range  of  townships,  counted  in  that  di- 
rection from  the  Pennsylvania  boundary,  under  which  view  the 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  609 

said  twelfth  range  may  be  assumed  for  the  eastern  boundary  of 
the  territory  now  under  consideration,  from  the  said  tenth  range 
to  the  Indian  line. 

Southwardly.  By  the  northern  boundary  of  the  said  tenth 
range  of  townships  to  the  Sioto  river,  and  along  the  said  river  to 
what  shall  be  the  northern  limits  of  the  appropriations  for  the 
Virginia  line  ;  (which  two  last  lines  are  those  of  the  lands  grant- 
ed to  the  Sioto  company,)  thence  along  what  shall  be  the  north- 
ern limits  of  the  said  appropriations  of  the  Virginia  line  to  the 
little  Miami,  and  along  the  same  to  what  shall  be  the  northern 
limit  of  one  million  of  acres  of  land  purchased  by  John  C. 
Symmes ;  thence  due  west  along  the  said  northern  limit  of  the 
said  John  C.  Symmes,  to  the  Great  Miami,  and  down  the  same 
to  its  mouth,  then  along  the  Ohio  to  General  Clark's  lands,  and 
round  the  said  lands  to  the  Ohio  again,  and  down  the  same  to 
the  Wabash,  or  the  lands  of  the  Indians  inhabiting  it.  Which 
several  lines  are  delineated  on  the  copy  of  Hutchins'  map  accom- 
panying this  report ;  the  dotted  parts  of  the  delineation  denoting 
that  they  are  conjectural.  And  it  is  farther  necessary  to  apprize  the 
commissioners  that  though  the  points  at  which  these  several  lines 
touches  the  Ohio,  are  taken  from  actual  surveys,  yet  the  country 
included  by  the  said  lines,  not  being  laid  down  from  actual  sur- 
vey, their  lengths  and  intersections  with  each  other,  and  with 
the  watercourses,  as  appearing  in  the  maps,  are  not  at  all  to  be 
relied  on.  No  notice  is  here  taken  of  the  lands  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Ohio  appropriated  for  military  bounties  by  the  same  resolu- 
tion of  Congress  of  October  22,  1787,  nor  of  the  settlement  of 
Cahokea,  Kaskaskia,  Post  Vincennes,  &.c.,  because  these  can  con- 
cern no  Indians  but  those  of  the  Illinois  and  Wabash,  whose  in- 
terests should  be  transacted  with  themselves  separately,  and  not 
be  peiiiiifced  to  be  placed  under  the  patronage  of  the  western 
Indian". 

VOL.  VII.  39 


610  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

XXXIY, — Report  on  the  proceedings  of  the  Secretary  of  Stale 
to  transfer  to  Europe  the  annual  fund  of  $40,000,  appropri- 
ated, to  that  Department. 

April  18,  1793. 

The  Secretary  of  State  thinking  it  his  duty  to  communicate 
to  the  President  his  proceedings  of  the  present  year  for  transfer- 
ring to  Europe  the  annual  fund  of  $40,000  appropriated  to  the 
Department  of  State,  (a  report  whereof,  was  unnecessary  the  two 
former  years,  as  monies  ah'eady  in  the  hands  of  our  bankers  in 
Europe  were  put  under  his  orders,) 

Reports,  That  in  consequence  of  the  President's  order  of 
March  23d,  he  received  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
March  31st,  a  warrant  on  the  Treasurer  for  $39,500;  that  it  be- 
ing necessary  to  purchase  private  bills  of  exchange  to  transfer 
the  money  to  Europe,  he  consulted  with  persons  acquainted  with 
that  business,  who  advised  him  not  to  let  it  be  known  that  he 
was  to  purchase  bills  at  all,  as  it  would  raise  the  exchange  ;  and 
to  defer  the  purchase  a  few  days  until  the  British  packet  should 
be  gone,  on  which  event  bills  generally  sunk  some  few  per  cent. 
He  therefore  deferred  the  purchase,  or  giving  any  orders  for  it 
till  April  10th,  when  he  engaged  Mr.  Vaughan  (whose  line  of 
business  enabled  him  to  do  it  without  suspicion,)  to  make  the 
purchase  for  him.  He  then  delivered  the  warrant  to  the  Treas- 
urer, and  received  a  credit  at  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  for 
$39,500,  whereon  he  had  an  account  opened  between  "  The 
Department  of  State  and  the  Bank  of  the  United  States."  That 
Mr.  Vaughan  procured  for  him  the  next  day  the  following  bills : 

Willing,  Morris,  and  Swanwich,  on  John  and  Francis  Baring 
&Co.,  London,  £3,000  =  $13,000. 

Walter  Stewart  on  Joseph  Birch,  March,  Liverpool,  £400=^ 
$1,733  33. 

Robert  Gilmer  &  Co.,  on  James  Strachan  and  James  Mackenzie 
London,  endorsed  by  Mordecai  Lewis. 

£200  ) 
150  \     £600  =  $2,600 

250  ) 

£4,000  =  $17,333  33. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  611 

Averaging  4s.  TyVod.  the  dollar,  or  aboui,  21-  per  cent,  above 
par,  which  added  to  the  one  per  cent  loss  heretofore  always  sus- 
tained on  the  government  bills  (which  allowed  but  99  florins, 
instead  of  100  do.  for  every  $40)  will  render  the  fund  somewhat 
larger  this  year  than  heretofore ;  that  these  bills  being  drawn  on 
London,  (for  none  could  be  got  on  Amsterdam  but  to  considera- 
ble loss,  added  fo  the  risk  of  the  present  possible  situation  of  that 
place),  he  had  them  made  payable  to  Mr.  Pinckney,  and  enclosed 
them  to  him  by  Captain  Cutting,  in  the  letter  of  April  12th,  now 
communicated  to  the  President,  and  at  the  same  time  wrote  the 
letters  of  the  same  date  to  our  bankers  at  Amsterdam  and  to  Col. 
Humphreys,  now  also  communicated  to  the  President,  which 
will  place  under  his  view  the  footing  on  which  this  business  is 
put,  and  which  is  still  subject  to  any  change  he  may  think  proper 
to  direct,  as  neither  the  letters,  nor  bills  are  yet  gone. 

The  Secretary  of  State  proposes,  hereafter,  to  remit  in  the 
course  of  each  quarter  $10,000  for  the  ensuing  quarter,  as  that 
will  enable  him  to  take  advantage  of  the  times  when  exchange 
is  low.  He  proposes  to  direct,  at  this  time,  a  further  purchase 
of  $12,166  66,  (which  with  the  $500  formerly  obtained  and 
$17,333  33  now  remitted,  will  make  $30,000  of  this  year's  fund,) 
at  long  sight,  which  circumstance  with  the  present  low  rate  of 
exchange,  will  enable  him  to  remit  it  to  advantage. 

He  has  only  further  to  add  that  he  delivered  to  Mr.  Vaughan 
orders  on  the  bank  of  the  United  States  in  favor  of  the  persons 
themselves  from  whom  the  bills  were  purchased,  for  their  re- 
spective sums. 


XXXV. Opinion  on  the  question  whether  the  United  States 

have  a  right  to  renounce  their  treaties  with  France,  or  to  hold 
them  suspended  till  the  government  of  that  country  shall  be 
established.  ^p^.,  ^^  ^,^3 

1  proceed  in  compliance  with  the  requisition  of  the  President 
to  give  an  opinion  in  writing  on  the  general  question,  whether 


612  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

the  United  States  have  a  right  to  renounce  their  treaties  -.vith 
France,  or  to  hold  them  suspended  till  the  government  of  that 
country  shall  be  established  ? 

In  the  consultation  at  the  President's  on  the  19th  inst.j  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  took  the  following  positions  and  con- 
sequences. France  was  a  monarchy  when  we  entered  into  treat- 
ies with  it ;  but  it  has  declared  itself  a  republic,  and  is  preparing 
a  republican  form  of  government.  As  it  may  issue  in  a  repub- 
lic or  a  military  despotism,  or  something  else  which  may  pos- 
sibly render  our  alliance  with  it  dangerous  to  ourselves,  we  have 
a  right  of  election  to  renounce  the  treaty  altogether,  or  to  de- 
clare it  suspended  till  their  government  shall  be  settled  in  the 
form  it  is  ultimately  to  take  ;  and  then  we  may  judge  whether 
we  will  call  the  treaties  into  operation  again,  or  declare  them  for- 
ever null.  Having  that  right  of  election,  now,  if  we  receive 
their  minister  without  any  qualifications,  it  will  amount  to  an  act 
of  election  to  continue  the  treaties  ;  and  if  the  change  they  are 
undergoing  should  issue  in  a  form  which  should  bring  danger  on 
us,  we  shall  not  be  then  free  to  renounce  them.  To  elect  to 
continue  them  is  equivalent  to  the  making  a  new  treaty,  at  this 
time,  in  the  same  form,  that  is  to  say,  with  a  clause  of  guarantee ; 
but  to  make  a  treaty  with  a  clause  of  guarantee,  during  a  war,  is 
a  departure  from  neutrality,  and  would  make  us  associates  in  the 
war.  To  renounce  or  suspend  the  treaties,  therefore,  is  a  neces- 
sary act  of  neutrality. 

If  I  do  not  subscribe  to  the  soundness  of  this  reasoning,  I  do 
most  fully  to  its  ingenuity.  I  shall  now  lay  down  the  princi- 
ples which,  according  to  my  understanding,  govern  the  case. 

I  consider  the  people  who  constitute  a  society  or  nation  as  the 
source  of  all  authority  in  that  nation  ;  as  free  to  transact  their 
common  concerns  by  any  agents  they  think  proper  ;  to  change 
these  agents  individually,  or  the  organization  of  them  in- form  or 
function  whenever  they  please  ;  that  all  the  acts  done  by  these 
agents  under  the  authority  of  the  nation,  are  the  acts  of  the  na- 
tion, are  obligatory  to  them  and  enure  to  their  use,  and  can  in 
uo  wise  be  annulled  or  affected   by  any  change  in  the  iorm  of 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  613 

the  government,  or  of  the  persons  administering  it,  consequently 
the  treaties  between  the  United  States  and  France,  were  not 
treaties  between  the  United  States  and  Louis  Capet,  but  between 
the  two  nations  of  America  and  Prance  ;  and  the  nations  re- 
maining m  existence,  though  both  of  them  have  since  changed 
their  forms  of  government,  the  treaties  are  not  annulled  by  these 
changes.  The  law  of  nations,  by  which  this  question  is  to  be 
determined,  is  composed  of  three  branches.  1.  The  moral  law 
of  our  nature.  2.  The  usages  of  nations.  3.  Their  special 
conventions.  The  first  of  these  only  concerns  this  question, 
that  is  to  say  the  moral  law  to  which  man  has  been  subjected  by 
his  creator,  and  of  which  his  feelings  or  conscience,  as  it  is 
sometimes  called,  are  the  evidence  with  which  his  creator  has 
furnished  him.  The  moral  duties  which  exist  between  indi- 
vidual and  individual  in  a  state  of  nature,  accompany  them  into 
a  state  of  society,-  and  the  aggregate  of  the  duties  of  all  the  ia- 
dividuals  composing  the  society  constitutes  the  duties  of  that  so- 
ciety towards  any  other ;  so  that  between  society  and  society 
the  same  moral  duties  exist  as  did  between  the  individuals  com- 
posing them,  while  in  an  unassociated  state,  and  their  maker  not 
having  released  them  from  those  duties  on  their  forming  them- 
selves into  a  nation.  Compacts  then,  between  nation  and  nation, 
are  obligatory  on  them  by  the  same  moral  law  which  obliges  in- 
dividuals to  observe  their  compacts.  There  are  circumstances, 
however,  which  sometimes  excuse  the  non-performance  of  con- 
tracts between  man  and  man  ;  so  are  there  also  between  nation 
and  nation.  When  performance,  for  instance,  becomes  impossi- 
ble, non-performance  is  not  immoral ;  so  if  performance  becomes 
self-destructive  to  the  party,  the  law  of  self-preservation  overrules 
the  laws  of  obligation  in  others.  For  the  reality  of  these  prin- 
ciples I  appeal  to  the  true  fountains  of  evidence,  the  head  and 
heart  of  every  rational  and  honest  man.  It  is  there  nature  has 
written  her  moral  laws,  and  where  every  man  may  read  tliera 
for  himself..  He  will  never  read  there  the  permission  to  annul 
his  obligations  for  a  time,  or  forever,  whenever  they  become 
dangerous,  useless,  or  disagreeable  ;  certainly  not  when  merely 


614  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

useless  or  disagreeable,  as  seems  to  be  said  in  an  authority  which 
has  been  quoted,  (Vattel,  p.  2,  197)  and  though  he  may,  under 
certain  degrees  of  danger,  yet  the  danger  must  be  imminent, 
and  the  degree  great.  Of  these,  it  is  true,  that  nations  are  to  be 
judges  for  themselves  ;  since  no  one  nation  has  a  right  to  sit  in 
judgment  over  another,  but  the  tribunal  of  our  consciences  re- 
mains, and  that  also  of  the  opinion  of  the  world.  These  will 
revise  the  sentence  we  pass  in  our  own  case,  and  as  we  respect 
these,  we  must  see  that  in  judging  ourselves  we  have  honestly 
done  the  part  of  impartial  and  rigorous  judges. 

Bat  reason  which  gives  this  right  of  self-liberation  from  a 
contract  in  certain  cases,  has  subjected  it  to  certain  just  limitations. 

I.  The  danger  which  absolves  us  must  be  great,  inevitable 
and  imminent.  Is  such  the  character  of  that  now  apprehended 
from  our  treaties  with  France  ?  What  is  that  danger  ?  1st.  Is  it 
that  if  their  government  issues  in  a  military  despotism,  an  al- 
liance with  them  may  taiat  us  with  despotic  principles  ?  But 
their  government  when  we  allied  ourselves  to  it,  was  perfect  des- 
potism, civil,  and  military,  yet  the  treaties  were  made  in  that  very 
state  of  things,  and,  therefore,  that  danger  can  furnish  no  just  cause. 

2d.  Is  it  that  their  government  may  issue  in  a  republic,  and 
too  much  strengthen  our  republican  principles  ?  But  this  is  the 
hope  of  the  great  mass  of  our  constituents,  and  not  their  dread. 
They  do  not  look  with  longing  to  the  happy  mean  of  a  limited 
monarchy. 

3d.  But,  says  the  doctrine  I  am  combatting,  the  change  the 
French  are  undergoing,  may  possibly  end  in  something  we  know 
not  what,  and  may  bring  on  us  danger  we  know  not  whence. 
In  short,  it  may  end  in  a  Raw-head  and  bloody  bones  in  the 
dark.  Very  well — let  Raw-head  and  bloody  bones  come.  We 
shall  be  justified  in  making  our  peace  with  him  by  renouncing 
our  ancient  friends  and  his  enemies ;  for  observe,  it  is  not  the 
possibility  of  danger  which  absolves  a  party  from  his  contract 
for  that  possibility  always  exists,  and  in  every  case.  It  existed 
in  the  present  one,  at  the  moment  of  making  the  contract.  If 
possibilities  would  void  contracts,  there  never  could  be  a  valid 


.OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  615 

contract,  for  possibilities  hang  over  everything.  Obhgation  is 
not  suspended  till  the  danger  is  become  real,  and  the  moment  of 
it  so  imminent,  that  we  can  no  longer  avoid  decision  without 
forever  losing  the  opportunity  to  do  it.  But  can  a  danger  which 
has  not  yet  taken  its  shape,  which  does  not  yet  exist,  and  never 
may  exist  which  cannot  therefore  be  defined— can  such  a  danger, 
I  ask,  be  so  imminent  that  if  we  fail  to  pronounce  on  it  in  this 
moment,  we  can  never  have  another  opportunity  of  doing  it  ? 

4.  As  to  the  danger  apprehended,  Is  it  that  (the  treaties  re- 
maining valid)  the  clause  guaranteeing  their  West  Indian  lands 
will  engage  us  in  the  war  ?  But  does  the  guarantee  engage  us 
to  enter  into  the  war  on  any  event  ?  Are  we  to  enter  in*;o  it  be- 
fore we  are  called  on  by  our  allies. 

Have  we  been  called  on  by  them  ?  Shall  we  ever  be  called 
on  ? 

Is  it  their  interest  to  call  on  us  ? 

Can  they  call  on  us  before  their  islands  are  invaded,  or  imme- 
diately threatened  ? 

If  they  can  save  them  themselves,  have  they  a  right  to  call  on 
us? 

Are  we  obliged  to  go  to  war  at  once,  without  trying  peaceable 
negotiations  with  their  enemy  ? 

If  all  these  questions  are  against  us,  there  are  still  others  left 
behind. 

Are  we  in  a  condition  to  go  to  war  ? 

Can  we  be  expected  to  begin  before  we  are  in  condition  ? 

Will  the  islands  be  lost  if  we  do  not  save  them  ? 

Have  we  the  means  of  saving  them  ? 

If  we  cannot  save  them,  are  we  bound  to  go  to  war  for  a  des- 
perate object? 

Many,  if  not  most  of  these  questions  ofler  grounds  of  doubt 
whether  the  clause  of  guarantee  will  draw  us  into  the  war.  Con- 
sequently, if  this  be  danger  apprehended,  it  is  not  yet  certain 
enough  to  authorize  us  in  sound  morality  to  declare,  at  this  mo- 
ment, the  treaties  null. 

5.  Is  danger  apprehended  from  the  17th  article  of  the  treaty  of 


616  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

commerce,  which  admits  French  ships  of  war  and  privateers  tc 
come  and  go  freely,  with  prizes  made  on  their  enemies,  while  their 
enemies  are  not  to  have  the  same  privilege  with  prizes  made  on  the 
French  ?  But  Holland  and  Prussia  have  approved  of  this  article 
in  om*  treaty  with  France,  by  subscribing  to  an  express  salvo 
of  it  in  our  treaties  with  them.  (Dutch  treaty  22,  convention  6. 
Prussian  treaty  19.)  And  England,  in  her  last  treaty  with 
France,  (Art.  40,)  has  entered  into  the  same  stipulation  verbatim, 
and  placed  us  in  her  ports  on  the  same  footing  in  which  she  is 
in  ours,  in  case  of  a  war  of  either  of  us  with  France.  If  we 
are  engaged  in  such  a  war,  England  must  receive  prizes  made  on 
us  by  the  French,  and  exclude  those  made  on  the  French  by 
us.  Nay,  further  ;  in  this  very  article  of  her  treaty  with  France, 
is  a  salvo  of  any  similar  article  in  any  anterior  treaty  of  either 
party ;  and  ours  with  France  being  anterior,  this  salvo  confirms 
it  expressly.  Neither  of  these  three  powers,  then,  have  a  right 
to  complain  of  this  article  in  our  treaty. 

6.  Is  the  danger  apprehended  from  the  22d  article  of  our 
treaty  of  commerce,  which  prohibits  the  enemies  of  France  from 
fitting  out  privateers  in  our  posts,  or  selling  their  prizes  here  ; 
but  we  are  free  to  refuse  the  same  thing  to  France,  there  being 
no  stipulation  to  the  contrary  ;  and  we  ought  to  r  fuse  it  on  prin- 
ciples of  fair  neutrality. 

7.  But  the  reception  of  a  minister  from  the  republic  of  France, 
without  qualifications,  it  is  thought,  will  bring  us  into  danger ; 
because  this,  it  is  said,  will  determine  the  continuance  of  the 
treaty,  and  take  from  us  the  right  of  self-liberation,  when  at  any 
time  hereafter  our  safety  would  require  us  to  use  it.  The  re- 
ception of  the  minister  at  all,  (in  favor  of  which  Colonel  Ham- 
ilton has  given  his  opinion,  though  reluctantly,  as  he  confessed,) 
IS  au  acknowledgment  of  the  legitimacy  of  their  government ; 
and  if  the  qualifications  meditated  are  to  deny  that  legitimacy,  it 
will  he  a  curious  compound  which  is  to  admit  and  to  deny  die 
same  thing.  But  I  deny  that  the  reception  of  a  minister  has  any 
thing  to  do  with  the  treaties.  There  is  not  a  word  in  either  of 
ihem  about  sending  ministers.     This  has  been  done  between  us 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  617 

under  the  common  usage  of  nations,  and  can  have  no  effect  either 
to  continue  or  annul  the  treaties. 

But  how  can  any  act  of  election  have  the  effect  to  continue  a 
treaty  which  is  acknowledged  to  be  going  on  still  ? — for  it  was 
not  pretended  the  treaty  was  void,  but  only  voidable  if  we  choose 
to  declare  it  so.  To  make  it  void,  would  require  an  act  of 
election,  but  to  let  it  go  on,  requires  only  that  we  should  do  no- 
thing ;  and  doing  nothing  can  hardly  be  an  infraction  of  peace 
or  neutrality. 

But  I  go  further  and  deny  that  the  most  explicit  declaration 
made  at  this  moment  that  we  acknowledge  the  obligation  of  the 
treaties,  could  take  from  us  the  right  of  non-compliance  at  any 
future  time,  wheri  compliance  would  involve  us  in  great  and 
inevitable  danger. 

I  conclude,  then,  that  few  of  these  sources  threaten  any 
danger  at  all ;  and  from  none  of  them  is  it  inevitable  ;  and  con- 
sequently, none  of  them  give  us  the  right  at  this  moment  of  re- 
leasing ourselves  from  our  treaties. 

II.  A  second  limitation  on  our  right  of  releasing  ourselves,  is 
that  we  are  to  do  it  from  so  much  of  the  treaties  only  as  is  bring- 
ing great  and  inevitable  danger  on  us,  and  not  from  the  residue, 
allowing  the  other  party  a  right  at  the  same  time,  to  deter- 
mine whether  on  our  non-compliance  with  that  part,  they 
will  declare  the  whole  void.  This  right  they  would  have,  but 
we  should  not.  Vattel,  2.  202.  The  only  part  of  the  treaty 
which  can  really  lead  us  into  danger,  is  the  clause  of  guarantee. 
That  clause  is  all  that  we  could  suspend  in  any  case,  and  the 
residue  will  remain  or  not  at  the  will  of  the  other  party. 

III.  A  third  limitation  is  that  when  a  party  from  necessity  or 
danger  withholds  compliance  with  part  of  a  treaty,  it  is  bound  to 
make  compensation  where  the  nature  of  the  case  admits  and  does 
not  dispeuse  with  it.  2  Vattel,  324.  Wolf,  270.  443.  If  actual  cir- 
cumstaii'-.es  excuse  us  from  entering  into  the  war  under  the  clause 
pf  gua;antee,  it  will  be  a  question  whether  they  excuse  us  from 
compensation.  Our  weight  in  the  war  admits  of  an  estimate  ;  and 
that  estimate  would  form  the  measure  of  compensation. 


618 


JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


If^  in  withholding  a  compliance  with  any  part  of  the  treaties, 
we  do  it  without  just  cause  or  compensation,  we  give  to  France 
a  cause  of  war,  and -so  become  associated  in  it  on  the  other  side. 
An  injured  friend  is  the  bitterest  of  foes,  and  France  has  not  dis- 
covered either  timidity,  or  over-much  forbearance  on  the  late  oc- 
casions. Is  this  the  position  we  wish  to  take  for  our  constitii- 
ents?  It  is  certainly  not  the  one  they  would  take  for  them- 
selves. 

I  will  proceed  now  to  examine  the  principal  authority  which 
has  been  relied  on  for  establishing  the  right  of  self-liberation ; 
because  though  just  in  part,  it  would  lead  us  far  be3^ond  justice, 
if  taken  in  all  the  latitude  of  which  his  expressions  would  admit. 
(Questions  of  natural  right  are  triable  by  their  conformity  with 
the  moral  sense. and  reason  of  man.  Those  who  write  treatises 
of  natural  law,  can  only  declare  what  their  own  moral  sense  and 
reason  dictate  in  the  several  cases  they  state.  Such  of  them  as 
happen  to  have  feelings  and  a  reason  coincident  with  those  of 
the  wise  and  honest  part  of  mankind,  are  respected  and  quoted 
as  witnesses  of  what  is  morally  right  or  wrong  in  particular 
cases.  Grotius,  Puffendorf,  Wolf,  and  Vattel  are  of  this  number. 
Where  they  agree  their  authority  is  strong  ;  but  where  they 
differ,  (and  they  often  dilTer,)  we  must  appeal  to  our  own  feelings 
and  reason  to  decide  between  them.  The  passages  in  question 
shall  be  traced  through  all  these  writers  ;  that  we  may  see  wherein 
they  concur,  and  where  that  concurrence  is  wanting.  It  shall 
be  quoted  from  them  in  the  order  in  which  they  wrote,  that  is 
to  say,  from  Grotius  first,  as  being  the  earliest  writer,  Puffendorf 
next,  tlien  Wolf,  and  lastly  Vattel,  as  latest  in  time. 


Grotius  2.  Ifi.  16. 

Hither  must  be  relbr 
red  llie  cnimiKm  ques- 
tion concerning  personal 
and  rvn\  treaiies.  If  in- 
deed it  be  Willi  a  iVec 
people,  Ihere  cjin  be  nn 
duiibl  but  that  the  en- 
gagcmeni  is  in  its  niiLure 
real,  becmise  llie  »ubjeci 
isa  perin;ineiii  (liing,  iind 
even  Ibougli  ilie  tinvern- 
ment  of  the  Stale  br 
';hauged  into  u  kingdum, 


PUFFKNDOKF   P.  9.  (). 

Ii  13  ceilain  tliat  every 
iilliance  made  with  a  re- 
public is  re-al  in  its  na- 
lure,  and  continues  con- 
se()iienlly  to  the  lerm 
iiL'reed  on  by  the  Ireah, 
iillliougli  tlie  ma'^islrules 
who  concluded  it  be 
dead  before,  bo  that  the 
(orin  of  gnvernrnent  is 
{'.lumped  even  from  a 
ilemocracy  to  a  monar- 
chy ;  fur  in  this  case  tbe 


Wolf  n4lt. 
Tlie  alliance  which  is 
made  wilb  a  free  people, 
or  wiih  a  popular  gov- 
ernment, is  a  real  iilli- 
Jince ;  and  as  when  the 
form  of  government 
chunges,  the  puoplo  re- 
main the  same  (for  it  is 
the  association  which 
rbrms  ihe  people,  and 
nut  ihe  manner  of  jtd- 
miiiistoriug  the  govern- 
meutj.       This     alliance 


Vattel  2.  197. 
The  same  question 
presents  itself  in  real  al- 
liiHices,  and  in  general 
on  every  alliance  made 
Willi  a  State,  anil  not  ill 
particular  with  akingfor 
I  he  defence  uHiis  person. 
We  ought,  wilhout 
doubt,  to  defend  our  silly 
against  all  invasion, 
agiiinst  all  fot-eign  vi'v 
lence,  and  even  agniiiat 
rebel      aubjecla.        We 


OFFICIAL    PAPEES. 


61S 


Grotius  2.  16. 16. 
tbe  trealy  remains;  be^ 
cause  ihe  same  body  re- 
mains though  the  head  h 
changed  ;  and  as  it  wai- 
before  now,  ilie  govern- 
ment whit'h  is  exertiiseil 
by  a  kinii  does  not  cease 
to  be  ilie  goveninient  ol' 
the  people.  Tliere  is  an 
exception  when  llie  ob- 
jeci  neems  peculiar  In 
thego^■ernlne:]I,  as  if  free 
citie^  coniract  n  leagut- 
for  the  dc.ejice  of  iheii' 
Ireedom. 


Pt7FFEND0RF   8.9.6. 

people  do  not  cease  to 
be  -ihe  same,  and  Ihe 
king,  in  the  case  aiip- 
|l0^e^!,  being  esiablished 
by  the  consent  of  tiie 
people  who  abolished 
Ihe  republican  guvern- 
inent,  is  understood  to 
accept  the  crown  with 
all  the  engagemenis 
which  Ihe  people  con- 
fessing it  had  contracted 
as  being  free  and  go\ern- 
ing  themeetves.  There 
must  neverlheies^"  be  an 
exception  of  the  alliances 
contracied  wiih  a  view 
to  preserve  the  present 
government;  :is  if  iwn 
republics  league  for  mu- 
lual  defence  against  thnse 
who  would  undertake  to 
invade  their  liberty  ;  for 
f  one  of  these  two  peo- 
ple consent  afiervvards 
voluniardy  to  change  the 
form  of  Ihe  governmeni. 
the  alliance  ends  ufiiself, 
because  the  reason  on 
which  it  was  founded 
no  longer  subsists. 


Woi.F  1146. 
subsists,  though  the  form 
of  Liovernmeiit  changes, 
miicbs^  as  is  evident,  the 
reason  of  Ihe  alliance  was 


Vattel  2.    97. 
ought,  in  like  manner,  to 
defend  a  republic  ag.iinst 
ilie  enterprises  of  an  op- 
pressor   of    the     public 


particular  to  the  popular;  libeny.    But  we  ought  to 
state.  recollect  ihat  we  are  Ihe 

lally  of  the  ^tale  or  of  the 
naiion,  imd  itot  ils  judge. 
If  the  nali(ui  hasdepi>sed 
its  king  in  form  :  if  the 
people  of  a  re|)ublic  have 
driven  away  iis  mas^is- 
trale-i,  and  hive  estab- 
lished themselves  free, 
or  if  ihey  have  acknowl- 
edged Ihe  aulhority  of 
an  usurper,  wliether  ex- 
pressly or  laciUy,  to  op- 
pose liifse  cUuneshc  ar- 
rangements—lo  contest 
their  jus: ice  or  validity — 
would  be  to  meddle  with 
Ihe  iroveriiment  of  Ihe 
nation,  and  lo  do  it  au 
injury.  The  ally  remains 
tlie  ally  of  ilie  slate,  not- 
wiihsianding  die  change 
which  has  taken  jjlace-; 
hut  if  this  ckavge  ren- 
ders the  alliance  itsciess, 
dnnfrrroiis^  or  disiigree' 
able  ill  it^  it.is  free  tu  re 
nnunce  it ;  fur  it  may 
say  witk  trtith^  that  it 
would  vot  have  allied  jt' 
sc/f  with  this  iiiition^  if 
it  had  been  iindtr  the 
present  fur  III  of  d,--  gov- 
ernment. 


The  doctrine  then  of  Grotius,  PufFendorf,  and  Wolf  is,  that 
"  treaties  remain  obligatory,  notwithstanding  any  change  in  the 
form  of  government,  except  in  the  single  case,  where  the  preser- 
vation of  that  form  was  the  object  of  the  treaty  ;"  there  the  treaty 
extinguishes,  not  by  the  election  or  declaration  of  the  party  re- 
maining in  statu  quo,  but  independently  of  that,  by  the  evanish- 
ment  of  the  object.  Vattel  lays  down  in  fact  the  same  doctrine, 
that  treaties  continue  obligatory,  notwithstanding  a  change  of 
government  by  the  will  of  the  other  party  ; — that  to  oppose  that 
will  would  be  a  wrong  ;  and  that  the  ally  remains  an  ally,  not- 
withstanding the  change.  So  far  he  concurs  with  all  the  pre- 
vious writers : — but  he  then  adds  what  they  had  not  said  nor 
could  say  ;  but  if  this  change  renders  the  alliance  useless,  dan- 
gerous or  disagreeable  to  it,  it  is  free  to  renounce  it.  It  was  un- 
necessary for  him  to  have  specified  the  exception  of  danger  in 
this  particular  case,  because  the  exception  exists  in  all  cases,  and 


620  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Its  extent  has  been  considered  ;  but  when  he  adds  that,  because 
a  contract  is  become  merely  useless  or  disagreeable  we  are  free  • 
to  renounce  it, — he  is  in  opposition  to  Grotius,  PufFendorf,  and 
Wolf,  who  admit  no  such  license  against  the  obligation  of 
treaties,  and  he  is  in  opposition  to  the  morality  of  every  honest 
man  to  whom  we  may  safely  appeal  to  decide  whether  he  feels 
himself  free  to  renounce  a  contract  the  moment  it  becomes 
merely  useless  or  disagreeable  to  him.  We  may  appeal  to  Vattel 
himself  in  those  parts  of  his  book  where  he  cannot  be  misunder- 
stood, and  to  his  known  character,  as  one  of  the  most  zealous 
and  constant  advocates  for  the  preservation  of  good  faith  in  all 
our  dealings.  Let  us  hear  him  on  other  occasions  ;  and  first 
where  he  shows  what  degree  of  danger  or  injury  will  authorize 
self-liberation  from  a  treaty :  "  If  simple  lesion,"  (lesion — the 
Loss  sustained  by  selling  a  thing  for  less  than  half  value,  which 
degree  of  loss  renders  the  sale  void  by  the  Roman  law,)  "if 
simple  lesion,"  says  he,  "  or  some  degree  of  disadvantage  in  a 
treaty  does  not  suffice  to  render  it  invalid,  it  is  not  so  as  to  in- 
convenience which  would  go  to  the  rwm  of  the  nation.  As 
every  treaty  ought  to  be  made  by  sufficient  power,  a  treaty  per- 
nicious to  the  State  is  null,  and  not  at  all  obligatory.  No  gov- 
ernor of  a  nation  having  power  to  engage  things  capable  of  de- 
stroying the  State,  for  the  safety  of  which  the  empire  entrusts 
to  him,  the  nation  itself,  bound  necessarily  to  whatever  its  pre- 
servation and  safety  require,  cannot  enter  into  engagements  con- 
trary to  its  indispensable  obligations."  Here  then  we  find  that 
the  degree  of  injury  or  danger  which  he  deems  sufficient  to  liber- 
ate us  from  a  treaty,  is  that  which  would  go  to  the  absolute 
ruin  or  destruction  of  the  State  ; — not  simply  the  lesion  of  the 
Roman  law,  not  merely  the  being  disadvantageous  or  dangerous ; 
for  as  he  himself  says,  Section  158,  "  lesion  cannot  render  a 
treaty  invalid.  It  is  his  duty  who  enters  into  engagements,  to 
weigh  well  all  things  before  he  concludes.  He  may  do  with 
his  property  what  he  pleases.  He  may  relinquish  his  rights  or 
renounce  his  advantages,  as  he  judges  proper.  The  acceptant  is 
not  obliged  to  inform  himself  of  his  motives  nor  to  weigh  theii 


O  F  F I C  I A  L     P  A  P  E  R  S .  621 

just  value.  If  we  could  free  ourselves  from  a  compact  because 
we  find  ourselves  injured  by  it,  there  would  be  nothing  firm  in 
the  contracts  of  nations.  Civil  laws  may  set  limits  to  lesion, 
and  determine  the  degree  capable  of  produciag  a  nullity  of  the 
contract ;  but  sovereigns  acknowledge  no  judge.  How  establish 
lesion  among  them  ?  Who  will  determine  the  degree  sufficient 
to  invalidate  a  treaty  ?  The  happiness  and  peace  of  nations  re- 
quire manifestly  that  their  treaties  should  not  depend  on  a  means 
of  nullity  so  vague  and  so  dangerous." 

Let  us  hear  him  again  on  the  general  subject  of  the  observation 
of  treaties,.  Section  163  :  "  It  is  demonstrated  in  natural  law  that 
he  who  promises  another,  confers  on  him  a  perfect  right  to  require 
the  thing  promised,  and  that  consequently,  not  to  observe  a  per- 
fect promise  is  to  violate  the  right  of  another  ;  it  is  as  manifest 
injustice  as  to  plunder  any  one  of  their  right.  All  the  tran- 
quillity, the  happiness  and  security  of  mankind,  rest  on  justice  or 
the  obligation  to  respect  the  rights  of  others.  The  respect  of 
others  for  our  right  of  domain  and  property  is  the  security  of  our 
actual  possessions.  The  faith  of  promises  is  the  security  for  the 
things  which  cannot  be  delivered  or  executed  on  the  spot.  No 
more  security,  no  more  commerce  among  men,  if  they  think 
themselves  not  bound  to  preserve  faith,  to  keep  their  word. 
This  obligation,  then,  is  as  necessary  as  it  is  natural  and  indu- 
bitable among  nations  who  live  together  in  a  state  of  nature,  and 
who  acknowledge  no  superior  on  earth.  To  maintain  order  and 
peace  in  their  society,  nations  and  their  governors  then  ought  to 
observe  inviolably  their  promises  and  their  treaties.  This  is  a 
great  truth,  although  too  often  neglected  in  practice,  is  generally 
acknowledged  by  all  nations,  the  reproach  of  perfidy  is  a  bitter 
affront  among  sovereigns.  Now  he  who  does  not  observe  a 
treaty  is  assuredly  perfidious,  since  he  violates  his  faith.  On 
the  contrary,  nothing  is  so  glorious  to  a  prince  and  his  nation  as 
the  reputation  of  inviolable  fidelity  to  his  word."  Again,  Section 
219,  "  Who  will  doubt  that  treaties  are  of  the  things  sacred  among 
ua.'-^ons?  They  decide  matters  the  most  important;  they  im- 
pose rules  on  the  pretensions  of  sovereigns ,  they  cause  the  rights 


622  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

of  nations  to  be  acknowledged  ;  they  assume  their  most  precious 
interests.  Among  political  bodies,  sovereigns,  who  acknowledge 
no  superior  on  earth,  treaties  are  the  only  means  of  adjusting  their 
different  pretensions  ;  of  establishing  a  rule,  to  know  on  what  to 
count,  ou  what  to  depend.  But  treaties  are  but  vain  words,  if 
nations  do  not  consider  them  as  respectable  engagements,  as  rules 
inviolable  for  sovereigns,  and  sacred  through  the  whole  earth." 
Section  220:  "  The  faith  of  treaties,  that  firm  and  sincere  will, 
that  invincible  constancy  in  fulfilling  engagements,  of  which  a 
declaration  is  made  in  a  treaty,  is  then  holy  and  sacred  among 
nations,  whose  safety  and  repose  it  ensures ;  and  if  nations  will 
not  be  wanting  to  themselves,  they  will  load  with  infamy  who- 
ever violates  his  faith." 

After  evidence  so  copious  and  explicit  of  the  respect  of  this 
author  for  the  sanctity  of  treaties,  we  should  hardly  have  expect- 
ed that  his  authority  would  have  been  resorted  to  for  a  wanton 
invalidation  of  them  whenever  they  should  become  merely  useless 
or  disagreeable.  We  should  hardly  have  expected  that,  reject- 
ing all  the  rest  of  his  book,  this  scrap  would  have  been  culled 
and  made  the  hook  whereon  to  hang  such  a  chain  of  immoral 
consequences.  Had  the  passage  accidentally  met  our  eye,  we 
should  have  imagiued  it  had  fallen  from  the  author's  pen  undei 
some  momentary  view,  not  sufficiently  developed  to  found  a  con 
jecture  what  he  meant,  and  we  may  certainly  affirm  that  a  frag 
ment  like  this  cannot  weigh  against  the  authority  of  all  othei 
writers  ;  against  the  uniform  and  systematic  doctrine  of  the  very 
work  from  which  it  is  torn  ;  against  the  moral  feelings  and  the 
reason  of  all  honest  men.  If  the  terms  of  the  fragment  are  not 
misunderstood,  they  are  in  full  contradiction  to  all  the  written 
and  unwritten  evidences  of  morality.  If  they  are  misunder- 
stood, they  are  no  longer  a  foundation  for  the  doctrines  which 
have  been  built  on  them. 

But  even  had  this  doctrine  been  as  true  as  it  is  manifestly 
false,  it  would  have  been  asked,  to  whom  is  it  that  the  treaties 
with  France  have  become  disagreeable  1  How  will  it  be  proved 
that  they  are  useless  1 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  623 

The  conclusion  of  the  sentence  suggests  a  reflection  too  strong 
to  be  suppressed,  "  for  the  party  may  say  with  truth  that  it  would 
not  have  allied  itself  with  this  nation  if  it  had  been  under  the 
present  form  of  its  government."  The  republic  of  the  United 
States  allied  itself  with  France  when  under  a  despotic  govern- 
ment. She  changes  her  government,  and  declares  it  shall  be  a 
republic  ;  prepares  a  form  of  republic  extremely  free,  aud  in  the 
meantime  is  governing  herself  as  such.  And  it  is  proposed  that 
America  shall  declare  the  treaties  void,  because  it  may  say  with 
truth  that  it  would  not  have  allied  itself  with  that  nation  if  it 
had  been  under  the  present  form  of  its  government.  Who  is 
the  American  who  can  say  with  truth  that  he  would  not  have 
allied  himself  to  Prance  if  she  had  been  a  republic  ?  Or  that 
a  republic  of  any  form  would  be  as  disagreeable  as  her  ancient 
despotism  ? 

Upon  the  whole  I  conclude,  that  the  treaties  are  still  binding, 
notwithstanding  the  change  of  government  in  France  ;  that  no 
part  of  them  but  the  clause  of  guarantee  holds  up  danger,  even 
at  a  distance,  and  consequently  that  a  liberation  from  no  other 
part  would  be  prepared  in  any  case  ;  that  if  that  clause  may  ever 
bring  danger,  it  is  neither  extreme  nor  imminent,  nor  even 
probable  that  the  authority  for  renouncing  a  treaty,  when  useless 
or  disagreeable,  is  either  misunderstood  or  in  opposition  to  itself, 
to  all  other  writers,  and  to  every  moral  feeling  ;  that  were  it  not 
so,  these  treaties  are  in  fact  neither  useless  or  disagreeable  ;  that 
the  receiving  a  minister  from  France  at  this  time  is  an  act  of 
no  significance  with  respect  to  the  treaties,  amounting  neither  to 
an  admission  nor  denial  of  them,  forasmuch  as  he  comes  not 
under  any  stipulation  in  them  ;  that  were  it  an  explicit  admis- 
sion, or  were  it  an  express  declaration  of  their  obligation  now  to 
be  made,  it  would  not  take  from  us  that  right  which  exists  at  all 
times,  of  hberating  ourselves  when  an  adherence  to  the  treaties 
would  be  ruinous  or  destructive  to  the  society ;  and  that  the  not 
renouncing  the  treaties  now  is  so  far  from  being  a  breach  of 
neutrality,  that  the  doing  it  would  be  the  breach,  by  giving 
just  cause  of  war  to  France. 


624  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 


XXXVI. —  Opinion  relative  to  granting  of  passports  to   Imeri- 

can  vessels. 

Mny  3,  1193. 

It  has  been  stated  in  our  treaties  with  the  French,  Dutch  and 
Prussians,  that  when  it  happens  that  either  party  is  at  war,  and 
the  other  neutral,  the  neutral  shall  give  passports  of  a  certain 
tenor  to  the  vessels  belonging  to  their  subjects,  in  order  to  avoid 
dissension  :  and  it  has  been  thought  that  passports  of  such  high 
import  to  the  persons  and  property  of  our  citizens  should  have 
the  highest  sanction  ;  that  of  the  signature  of  the  President,  and 
seal  of  the  United  States.  The  authority  of  Congress  also,  in 
the  case  of  sea  letters  to  East  India  vessels,  was  in  favor  of  this 
sanction.  It  is  now  become  a  question  whether  these  passports 
shall  be  given  only  to  ships  oicned  and  built  in  the  United  Statesj 
or  may  be  given  also  to  those  owned  in  the  United  States,  though 
built  in  foreign  countries. 

The  perfeons  and  property  of  our  citizens  are  entitled  to  the 
protection  of  our  government  in  all  places  where  they  may  law- 
fully go.  No  laws  forbid  a  merchant  to  buy,  own,  and  use  a 
foreign-built  vessel.  She  is,  then,  his  lawful  property,  and  en- 
titled to  the  protection  of  his  nation  whenever  he  is  lawfully 
using  her. 

The  laws  indeed,  for  the  encouragement  of  ship  building, 
have  given  to  home-built  vessels  the  exclusive  privilege  of  being 
registered  and  paying  hghter  duties.  To  this  privilege,  there- 
fore, the  foreign-built  vessel,  though  owned  at  home,  does  not  pre- 
tend. But  the  laws  have  not  said  that  they  withdraw  their  pro- 
tection from  the  foreign-built  vessel.  To  this  protection,  then, 
she  retains  her  title,  notwithstanding  the  preference  given  to  the 
home-built  vessel  as  to  duties.  It  would  be  hard  indeed  because 
the  law  has  given  one  valuable  right  to  home-built  vessels,  to  in- 
fer that  it  had  taken  away  all  rights  from  those  foreign-liuilt. 

In  conformity  with  the  idea  that  all  the  vessels  of  a  State  are 
entitled  to  its  protection,  the  treaties  before  mentioned  have  set- 
tled that  passports  shall  be  given,  not  merely  to  the  vessels  built 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  625 

in  the  United  States,  but  to  the  vessels  belonging  to  them  ;  and 
when  one  of  these  nations  shall  take  a  vessel,  if  she  has  not 
such  a  passport,  they  are  to  conclude  she  does  not  belong  to  the 
United  States,  and  is  therefore  lawful  prize ;  so  that  to  refuse 
these  passports  to  foreign-built  vessels  belonging  to  our  mer- 
chants, is  to  give  them  up  to  capture  with  their  cargoes.  The 
most  important  interests  of  the  United  States  hang  upon  this 
question.  The  produce  of  the  earth  is  their  principle  source  of 
wealth.  Our  home-built  vessels  would  sufB.ce  for  the  transporta- 
tion of  a  very  small  part  of  this  produce  to  market,  and  even  a 
part  of  these  vessels  will  be  withdrawn  by  high  premiums  to 
other  lines  of  business.  All  the  rest  of  our  produce,  then,  must 
remain  on  our  hands,  or  have  its  price  reduced  by  a  war  insur- 
ance. Many  descriptions  of  our  produce  will  not  bear  this  re- 
duction, and  would,  therefore,  remain  on  hand. 

We  shall  lose  also  a  great  proportion  of  the  profits  of  naviga- 
tion. The  great  hai-vest  for  these  is  when  other  nations  are  at 
war,  and  our  flag  neutral.  But  if  we  can  augment  our  stock  of 
shipping  only  by  the  slow  process  of  building,  the  harvest  will 
be  over  while  we  are  only  preparing  instruments  to  reap  it.  The 
moment  of  breeding  seamen  will  be  lost  for  want  of  bottoms  to 
embark  them  in. 

France  and  Holland  permit  our  vessels  to  be  neutralized  with 
them ;  not  even  to  suSer  theirs  to  be  purchased  hisre  might  give 
them  just  cause  to  revoke  the  privilege  of  naturalization  given 
to  ours,  and  would  inflict  on  the  ship-building  States  and  arti- 
zans  a  severe  injury. 

Objection.  To  protect  foreign-built  vessels  will  lessen  the  de- 
mand for  ship  building  here. 

Answer.  Not  at  all ;  because  as  long  as  we  can  build  cheap- 
er than  other  nations,  we  shall  be  employed  in  preference  to  oth- 
ers ;  besides,  shall  we  permit  the  greatest  part  of  the  produce  of 
our  fields  to  rot  on  our  hands,  or  lose  half  its  value  by  subject- 
ing it  to  high  insurance,  merely  that  our  ship  builders  may  have 
brisker  employ  ?  Shall  the  whole  mass  of  our  farmers  be  sacri- 
ficed to  the  class  of  ship  wrights  ? 

VOL.  VII,  40 


626  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Objection.  There  will  be  collusive  transfers  of  foreign  shipa 
to  our  merchants,  merely  to  obtain  for  them  the  cover  of  oui 
passports. 

Answer.  The  same  objection  lies  to  giving  passports  to  home 
built  vessels.  They  may  be  owned,  and  are  owned  by  foreigners, 
and  may  be  collusively  re-transferred  to  our  merchants  to  obtain 
our  passports.  To  lessen  the  danger  of  collusion,  however,  I 
should  be  for  delivering  passports  in  our  own  ports  only.  If 
they  were  to  be  sent  blank  to  foreign  ports  to  be  delivered  there, 
the  power  ol  checking  collusion  would  be  small,  and  they  might 
be  employed  to  cover  purposes  of  no  benefit  to  us  (which  we  ought 
not  to  countenance),  and  to  throw  our  vessels  out  of  business; 
but  if  issued  only  to  vessels  in  our  own  ports,  we  can  generally 
be  certain  that  the  vessel  is  oiir  property ;  and  always  that  the 
cargo  is  of  our  produce.  State  the  case  that  it  shall  be  found 
that  all  our  shipping,  home-built  and  foreign-built,  is  inadequate 
to  the  transportation  of  our  produce  to  market ;  so  that  after  all 
these  are  loaded,  there  shall  yet  remain  produce  on  hand.  This 
must  be  put  into  vessels  owned  by  foreigners.  Should  these  ob- 
tain collusively  the  protection  of  our  passport,  it  will  cover  their 
vessel  indeed,  but  it  will  cover  also  our  cargo.  I  repeat  it  then, 
that  if  the  issuing  passports  be  confined  to  our  ports,  it  will  be 
our  own  vessels  for  the  most  part,  and  always  our  cargoes  which 
will  be  covered  by  them. 

I  am,  therefore,  of  opinion,  that  passports  ought  to  be  issued 
to  all  vessels  belonging  to  citizens  of  the  United  States,  but  only 
on  their  clearing  out  from  our  own  ports,  and  for  that  voyage 
only. 


XXXVII. — Opinion  relative  to  case  of  a  British  vessel  captured 
by  a  French  vessel,  purchased  by  French  citizens,  and  fJted 
out  as  a  Privateer  in  one  of  our  ports. 

May  16,  lf93. 

The  facts  suggested,  or  to  be  taken  for  granted,  because  the 
contrary  is  not  known,  in  the  case  now  to  be  considered,  are, 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  627 

that  a  vessel  was  purchased  at  Charleston,  and  fitted  out  as  a 
privateer  by  French  citizens,  manned  with  foreigners  chiefly,  but 
partly  with  citizens  of  the  United  States.  The  command  given 
to  a  French  citizen  by  a  regular  commission  from  his  govern- 
ment ;  that  she  has  made  prize  of  an  English  vessel  in  the  open 
sea,  and  sent  her  into  Philadelphia.  The  British  minister  de- 
mands restitution,  and  the  question  is,  whether  the  Executive  of 
the  United  States  shall  undertake  to  make  it  ? 

This  transaction  may  be  considered,  1st,  as  an  offence  against 
the  United  States ;  2d,  as  an  injury  to  Great  Britain. 

In  the  first  view  it  is  not  now  to  be  taken  up.  The  opinion 
being,  that  it  has  been  an  act  of  disrespect  to  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  United  States,  of  which  proper  notice  is  to  be  taken  at  a 
proper  time. 

Under  the  second  point  of  view,  it  appears  to  me  wrong  on 
the  part  of  the  XTnited  States  (where  not  constrained  by  treaties) 
to  permit  one  party  in  the  present  war  to  do  what  cannot  be  per- 
mitted to  the  other.  We  cannot  permit  the  enemies  of  France 
to  fit  out  privateers  in  our  ports,  by  the  22d  article  of  our  treaty. 
We  ought  not,  therefore,  to  permit  France  to  do  it ;  the  treaty 
leaving  us  free  to  refuse,  and  the  refusal  being  necessary  to  pre- 
serve a  fair  neutrality.  Yet  considering  that  the  present  is  the 
first  case  which  has  arisen  ;  that  it  has  been  in  the  first  moment 
of  the  war,  in  one  of  the  most  distant  ports  of  the  United  States, 
and  before  measures  could  be  taken  by  the  government  to  meet 
all  the  cases  which  may  flow  from  the  infant  state  of  our  govern- 
ernment,  and  novelty  of  our  position,  it  ought  to  be  placed  by 
Great  Britain  among  the  accidents  of  loss  to  which  a  nation  is 
exposed  in  a  state  of  war,  and  by  no  means  as  a  premeditated 
wrong  on  the  part  of  the  government.  In  the  last  light  it  can- 
not be  taken,  because  the  act  from  which  it  results  placed  the 
United  States  with  the  offended,  and  not  the  offending  party. 
Her  minister  has  seen  himself  that  there  could  have  been  on  our 
part  neither  permission  or  connivance.  A  very  moderate  apology 
then  from  the  United  States  ought  to  satisfy  Great  Britain. 
The  one  we  have  made  already  is  ample,  to  wit,  a  pointed 


628  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

disapprobation  of  the  transaction,  a  promise  to  prosecute  and 
pnuish  according  to  law  such  of  our  citizens  as  have  been  con- 
cerned in  it,  and  to  take  effectual  measures  against  a  repetition. 
To  demand  more  would  be  a  wrong  in  Great  Britain ;  for  to  de- 
mand satisfaction  beyond  what  is  adequate,  is  wrong.  But  it  is 
jiroposed  further  to  take  the  prize  from  the  captors  and  restore 
her  to  the  English.     This  is  a  very  serious  proposition. 

The  dilemma  proposed  in  our  conferences,  appears  to  me  un- 
answerable. Either  the  commission  to  the  commander  of  the 
privateer  was  good,  or  not  good.  If  not  good,  then  the  tribunals 
of  the  country  will  take  cognizance  of  the  transaction,  receive 
the  demand  of  the  former  owner,  and  make  restitution  of  the 
capture ;  and  there  being,  on  this  supposition,  regular  remedy  at 
law,  it  would  be  irregular  for  the  government  to  interpose.  If 
the  commission  be  good,  then  the  capture  having  been  made  on 
the  high  seas,  under  a  valid  commission  from  a  power  at  war 
with  Great  Britain,  the  British  owner  has  lost  all  his  right,  and 
the  prize  would  be  deemed  good,  even  in  his  own  courts,  were 
the  question  to  be  brought  before  his  own  courts.  He  has  now 
no  more  claim  on  the  vessel  than  any  stranger  would  have  who 
never  owned  her,  his  whole  right  being  transferred  by  the  laws 
of  war  to  the  captor. 

The  legal  right  then  being  in  the  captors,  on  what  ground 
can  we  take  it  from  him?  Not  on  that  of  right,  for  the  right 
has  been  transfen-ed  to  him.  If  can  only  be  by  an  act  of  force, 
that  is  to  say,  of  reprisal  for  the  offence  committed  against  us  in 
the  port  of  Charleston.  But  the  making  reprisal  on  a  nation  is  a 
very  serious  thing.  Remonstrance  and  refusal  of  satisfaction 
ought  to  precede  ;  and  when  reprisal  follows,  it  is  considered  as 
an  act  of  war,  and  never  yet  failed  to  produce  it  in  the  case  of  a 
nation  able  to  make  war ;  besides,  if  the  case  were  important 
enough  to  require  reprisal,  and  ripe  for  that  step,  Congress  must 
be  called  on  to  take  it ;  the  right  of  reprisal  being  expressly 
lodged  with  them  by  the  Constitution,  and  not  with  the  Execu- 
tive. 

I  therefore  think  that  the  satisfaction  already  made  to  the  gov- 


OmOlAL    PAPERS.  629 

ernment  of  Great  Britain  is  quite  equal  to  what  ought  to  be  de- 
sired in  the  present  case  ;  that  the  property  of  the  British  owner 
is  transferred  by  the  laws  of  war  to  the  captor ;  that  for  us  to 
take  it  from  the  captor  would  be  an  act  of  force  or  reprisal,  which 
the  circumstances  of  the  case  do  not  justify,  and  to  which  the 
powers  of  the  Executive  are  not  competent  by  the  Constitution. 


XXXVIII. — Opinion  on  the  proposition  of  the  Secretary  of  tht 
Treasury  to  open  a  new  Loan. 

June  5,  1793. 

Instructions  having  been  given  to  borrow  two  millions  of 
florins  in  Holland,  and  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  proposing 
to  open  a  further  loan  of  three  millions  of  florins,  which  he  says 
"  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  aff'airs  of  the  United  States,  ir 
various  relations,  appears  to  him  to  recommend,"  the  President  is 
pleased  to  ask  whether  I  see  any  objections  to  the  proposition  ? 

The  power  to  borrow  money  is  confided  to  the  President  by 
the  two  acts  of  the  4th  and  12th  of  August,  1790,  and  the 
monies,  when  borrowed,  are  appropriated  to  two  purposes  only : 
to  wit,  the  twelve  millions  to  be  borrowed  under  the  former,  are 
appropriated  to  discharge  the  arrears  of  interest  and  instalments 
of  the  foreign  debt ;  and  the  two  millions,  under  the  latter,  to 
the  purchase  of  the  public  debt,  under  direction  of  the  trustees 
of  the  sinking  fund. 

These  appropriations  render  very  simple  the  duties  of  the 
President  in  the  discharge  of  this  trust.  He  has  only  to  look  to 
the  payment  of  the  foreign  debt,  and  the  purchase  of  the  general 
one.  And  in  order  to  judge  for  himself  of  the  necessity  of  the 
loan  proposed  for  eflTecting  these  two  purposes,  he  will  need  from 
the  treasury  the  following  statements  : — 

A.  A  statement  of  the  nett  amount  of  the  loans  already  made 
under  these  acts,  adding  to  that  the  two  millions  of  florins  now 
in  course  of  being  borrowed.  This  will  form  the  debit  of  the 
trust. 


630  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS 

The  credit  side  of  the  account  will  consist  of  the  following 
statements,  to  wit : — 

B.  Amount  of  the  principal  and  interest  of  foreign  debt,  paid 
and  payable,  to  the  close  of  1792. 

C.  Ditto,  payable  to  the  close  of  1793. 

D.  Ditto,  payable  to  the  close  of  1794  (for  I  think  our  prepa- 
ations  should  be  a  year  beforehand). 

E.  Amount  of  monies  necessary  for  the  sinking  fund  to  tho 
end  of  1794. 

If  the  amount  of  the  four  last  articles  exceeds  the  first,  it  will 
prove  a  further  loan  necessary,  and  to  what  extent. 

The  treasury  alone  can  furnish  these  statements  with  perfect 
accuracy.  But  to  show  that  there  is  probable  cause  to  go  into 
the  examination,  I  will  hazard  a  statement  from  materials  which, 
though  perhaps  not  perfectly  exact,  are  not  much  otherwise. 


Report  of  January  3,  1793.    New  Edition. 

Dr. 

The  truBt  for  loans, 

A.  To  nett  amount  of  loans  to  June  1,  1792,  as  stated  in  the 

treasury  report,  to  irit,  18,678,000  florins,  at  99  florins  to 

$40,  the  treasury  exchange $7,545,912 

To  loan  now  going  on  for  2,000,000  florins 808,080 

$8,353,992 

Cr. 

Florins. 
h.  By  charges  on  remittances  to  France     ....  10,073  1 

By  reimbursement  to  Spain 680,000 

By  interest  paid  to  foreign  ofEcers 105,000 

795,093  1=  $321,239  46 
By  principal  paid  to  foreign  officers     ....  191,316  90 

By  amount  of  French  debt,  principal  and  in-  Livres. 

interest,  payable  to  end  of  1791      ....     26,000,000 

By  ditto,  for  1792 3,450,000 

29,450,000    =5,845,171 
0.  By  ditto,  for  1793 3,410,000    =   618,915 

D.  By  ditto,  for  1794 3,250,000     =■    569,87i5 

E.  By  necessary  for  sinking   fund  at  $50,000  a 

month,  from  July  1,  1793,  to  Deo.  81,  1794  900,000 

Balance  which  will  remain  in  hands  of  the 

trust,  at  end  of  1''94 387,474  M 

$8,353,992"  00 


OFFICIAL     PAPERS.  631 

So  that  instead  of  an  additional  loan  being  necessary,  the 
monies  already  borrowed  will  suffice  for  all  the  purposes  to  whicn 
they  can  be  legally  applied  to  the  end  of  1794,  and  leave  a  sur- 
plus of  $387  474  64  to  cover  charges  and  errors.  And  as,  on  ac- 
count of  the  unsettled  state  of  the  French  government,  it  is  not 
proposed  to  pay  in  advance,  or  but  little  so,  any  further  sum 
would  be  lying  at  a  dead  interest  and  risk.  Perhaps  it  might  be 
said  that  new  monies  mast  be  borrowed  for  the  current  domestic 
service  of  the  year.  To  this  I  should  answer,  that  no  law  has 
authorized  the  opening  of  a  loan  for  this  purpose. 

If  it  should  be  said  that  the  monies  heretofore  borrowed  are 
so  far  put  out  of  our  power  that  we  cannot  command  them  be- 
fore an  instalment  will  be  due,  I  should  answer,  that  certainly  I 
would  rather  borrow  than  fail  in  a  payment ;  but  if  borrowing 
will  secure  a  payment  in  time,  the  two  millions  of  florins  now 
borrowing  are  sufficient  to  secure  it.  If  we  cannot  get  this  sum 
in  time,  then  we  cannot  get  an  additional  sum  in  time. 

The  above  account  might  be  stated  in  another  way,  which 
might,  perhaps,  be  more  satisfactory,  to  wit : 

Dr. 
The  trust  for  loans. 
To  uett  amount  of  loans  to  June  1,  1792.    18,678,000  florins, 

at  99  florins  to  $40 $7,545,912 

Cr. 

Florins 
By  charges  on  remittances  to  France    ....  10,073  1 

By  reimbursement  to  Spain 680,000 

By  interest  paid  to  foreign  officers 105,000 

"795,073  1"- $321,239  46 
By  principal  paid  to  foreign  officers    ....  191,316  90 

By  payments  to  France 10,073,043  8=4,069,918  54 

Li  V  res. 

By  ditto  to  St.  Domingo 4,000,000    =   726,000 

By  ditto  to         do.  3,000,000     =   544,500 

By  do.  to  Mr.  Ternant  [I  state  this  by  memory]  24,000    =        4,356 

Balance  in  hand  to  be  carried  to  new  debit  1,688,581   10 

$7,545,912  00 
Dr. 
The  trust  for  loans. 

To  balance  as  per  coctra •       $1,688,581  10 

To  two  millions  of  flcrins,  new 'oan,  when  efi'ected      .     .  808,080 

$2,496^661   10 


632  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

Cr. 

By  the  following  payments  when  made,  to  wit : 

Balance  due  to  France,  to  close  of  year  1792  Livras. 

(15,845,171— 15,344,7'74  54) $396  46 

Instalments  and  interest  to  close  of  year  1793         3,410,000=    618,913 
do.  do  1794         3,250,000=    889,875 

Necessary  for  sinking  fund  from  July  1,  1793, 

to  December  31,  1794 900,000 

Balance  will  then  be  in  hand  to  be  carried  to 

new  debit 387,474  64 

$2,496,661  10 

By  this  statement,  it  would  seem  as  if  all  the  payments  tc 
Prance,  hitherto  made  and  ordered,  would  not  acquit  the  yeai 
1792.     So  that  we  have  never  yet  been  clear  of  arrears  to  her. 

The  amount  of  the  French  debt  is  stated  according  to  the 
convention,  and  the  interest  is  calculated  accordingly.  Interest 
on  the  ten  million  loan  is  known  to  have  been  paid  for  the  years 
1784, 1785,  and  is  therefore  deducted.  It  is  not  known  whether 
it  was  paid  on  the  same  loan  for  the  years  1786—7—8—9,  previous 
to  the  payment  of  December  3,  1790,  or  whether  it  was  included 
in  that  payment ;  therefore  this  is  not  deducted.  But  if,  in  fact, 
it  was  paid  before  that  day,  it  will  then  have  lessened  the  debt 
so  much,  to  wit,  400,000  livres  a  year,  for  four  years,  making 
1,600,000  florins,  equal  to  f  290,400,  which  sum  would  put  us 
in  advance  near  half  of  the  instalments  of  1793.  Note, — livres 
are  estimated  at  jW  cents,  proposed  by  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  to  the  French  ministry  as  the  par  of  the  metals,  to  be 
the  rate  of  conversion. 

This  uncertainty  with  respect  to  the  true  state  of  our  account 
with  France,  and  the  difference  of  the  result  from  what  has  been 
understood,  shows  that  the  gentlemen  who  are  to  give  opinions 
on.  this  subject,  mast  do  it  in  the  dark,  and  suggests  to  the  Pres- 
ident the  propriety  of  having  an  exact  statement  of  the  account 
with  France  communicated  to  them,  as  the  ground  on  which 
they  are  to  give  opinions.  It  will  probably  be  material  in  that 
about  to  be  given  on  the  late  application  of  Mr.  Genet,  on  which 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  is  preparing  a  report. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  633 

XXXIX. — Opinion  relative  to  the  policy  of  a  neio  loan. 

Juae  17,  n9C 

I  cannot  see  my  way  clear  in  the  case  which  the  President 
has  been  pleased  to  ask  my  opinion,  but  by  recurring  to  these 
leading  questions : 

Of  the  $7,898,999  88  borrowed,  or  rather  of  the  $7,545,912, 
nett  proceeds  thereof,  how  much  has  been  applied  to  the  pay- 
ment of  the  foreign,  and  purchase  of  the  general  debt  ? 

To  the  balance  thereof,  which  should  be  on  hand,  and  the 
two  millions  of  florins  now  borrowing,  is  any  and  what  addition 
necessary,  for  the  same  objects,  for  the  years  1793,  1794  ? 

The  statement  furnished  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
does  not  answer  these  questions.  It  only  shows  what  has  been 
done  with  somewhat  less  than  three  millions  out  of  near  eight 
millions  of  dollars  which  have  been  borrowed,  and  in  so  doing 
it  takes  credit  for  two  sums  which  are  not  to  come  out  of  this 
sum,  and  therefore  not  to  be  left  in  the  account.  They  are  the 
following  : 

1.  A  sum  of  $284,901  89  expended  in  purchases  of  the  pub- 
lic debt.  In  the  general  report  of  the  trustees  of  the  sinking 
fund,  made  to  Congress  the  23d  of  February  last,  and  printed, 
it  appears,  page  29,  that  the  whole  amount  of  monies  laid  out 
by  them  was  $1,302,407  64,  from  which  were  to  be  deducted, 
as  is  mentioned  in  the  note  there  subjoined,  the  purchases  made 
out  of  the  interest  fund  (then  about  $50,000  as  well  as  I  recol- 
lect).  Call  the  sum  paid  then  $1,252,407  64.  By  the  Treasury 
report,  p.  38,  (new  edition,)  it  appears  that  the  surplus  of  domes- 
tic revenue  to  the  end  of  1790,  appropriated  to  this  object,  was 
$1,374,656  40,  and  p.  34,  that  the  monies  drawn  from  Europe 
on  account  of  the  foreign  loans,  were  not  the  instrument  of  these 
purchases  ;  and  in  some  part,  to  which  I  am  not  able  just  now  to 
turn,  I  recollect  pretty  certainly  that  it  is  said  these  purchases 
were  actually  carried  to  account,  as  was  proper,  against  the  do- 
mestic surplus,  consequently  they  are  not  to  be  allowed  in  the 
foreign  account  also.     Or  if  allowed  in  this,  the  sum  will  then 


634  JEFFERSON'S    -WORKS, 

be  due  from  the  surplus  account,  and  so  must  lessen  the  sum  to 
be  borrowed  for  the  sinking  fund,  which  amounts  to  the  same. 

2.  The  1st  instalment  due  to  the  bank  $200,000.  Though 
the  first  payment  of  the  subscription  of  the  United  States  to 
the  bank  might  have  been  made,  in  the  first  instant,  out  of  the 
foreign  monies  to  be  immediately  repaid  to  them  by  the  money 
borrowed  of  the  bank,  yet  this  useless  formality  was  avoided, 
and  it  was  a  mere  operation  of  the  pen  on  paper,  without  the 
displacement  of  a  single  dollar.  See  reports  p.  12.  And,  in  any 
event,  the  final  reimbursement  was  never  to  be  made  out  of  the 
foreign  fund,  which  was  appropriated  solely  to  -the  payment  of 
the  foreign,  and  purchase  of  the  general  debt. 

These  two  sums,  therefore,  of  $284,901  89  and  $200,000  are 
to  be  added  to  the  balance  of  $575,484  28  subject  to  future  dis- 
position, and  will  make  $1,050,386  17  actually  here,  and  still  to 
be  applied  to  the  proper  appropriation. 

However,  this  account,  as  before  observed,  being  only  of  a 
part  of  the  monies  borrowed,  no  judgment  can  be  formed  from 
it  of  the  expediency  of  borrowing  more  ;  nor  should  I  have 
stopped  to  rnake  a  criticism  on  it,  but  to  show  why  no  such  sums 
as  the  two  above  mentioned,  were  inserted  in  the  general  ac- 
count sketched  for  the  President,  June  5.  I  must  add  that  the 
miscellaneous  sum  of  $49,400  in  this  account,  is  probably  covered 
by  some  other  articles  of  that  as  far  as  it  is  chargeable  on  this 
fund ;  because  that  account,  under  one  form  or  another,  takes 
up  all  the  articles  chargeable  on  this  fund  which  had  appeared  in 
the  printed  reports. 

I  must,  therefore,  proceed  to  renew  my  statement  of  Jane  5, 
inserting  therein  the  1st  instalment  of  the  Dutch  loan  of  $404,- 
040  40  payable  this  month,  which  not  having  been  mentioned 
in  any  of  the  reports  heretofore  published,  was  not  inserted  in 
my  statement.  I  will  add  a  like  sum  for  the  year  1794,  because 
I  think  we  should  now  prepare  for  the  whole  of  that  year. 

As  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  does  not  seem  to  contemplate 
the  furnishing  any  fixed  sum  for  the  sinking  fund,  I  shall  leave 
hat  article  out  of  the  account.     The  President  can  easily  add  to 


OFFICIAL    PAPEES.  635 

Its  result  any  sum  he  may  decide  to  have  furnished  to  that  fund. 
The  account,  so  corrected,  will  stand  thus : 

Dr. 

The  trust  for  loans. 

To  nett  amount  of  loans  to  June  1,  1792 $'7,545,912 

To  loan  no-w  going  on  for  2,000,000  florins 808,080 

$8,353,992 
Or. 

Florins. 
By  charges  on  remittances  to  France      ....  10,073  1 

By  reimbursement  to  Spain 680,000 

By  interest  paid  to  foreign  officers 105,000 

795,073  1=  $321,239  46 
By  principal  paid  to  foreign  officers    ....  191,316  90 

By   amount   of  French  debt,  principal  and  in-       Livres. 

terest,  payable  to  end  of  17W1 26,000,000 

By  ditto  for  1792 3,450,000 

29,450,000     =5,345,171 

By  ditto  for  1793 3,410,000    =    618,915 

By  1st  instalment  of  Dutch  debt  due  June  1793  404,040  40 

By  instalments  and  interest  to  France  for  1794       3,250,000    =    569,875 

By  instalment  to  Holland  for  1794 404,040  40 

Balance  ■will  then  remain  in  hands  of  the  trust,  499,393  84 

$8;36S,992  00 

So  that  it  appears  there  would  be  a  balance  in  the  hands  of 
this  trust,  at  the  close  of  1794,  of  $499,393  84,  were  no  monies 
to  be  furnished  in  the  meantime  to  the  sinking  fund  ;  but  should 
the  President  determine  to  furnish  that  with  the  $900,000  pro- 
posed in  my  statement  of  June  5,  then  a  loan  would  be  necessary 
for  about  $400,000,  say  in  near  round  numbers,  1,000,000  of 
guilders,  in  addition  to  the  2,000,000  now  borrowing.  I  am,  in- 
dividually,  of  opinion  that  that  sum  ought  to  be  furnished  to  the 
sinking  fund,  and  consequently  that  an  additional  loan,  to  this 
extent,  should  be  made,  considering  the  subject  in  a  legal  point 
of  view  only. 

The  reasons  in  favor  of  the  extension  are. 

The  apprehension  of  the  extension  of  our  war  to  other  In- 
dian nations,  and  perhaps  to  Europe  itself. 

The  disability  this  might  produce  to  borrow  at  all,  [this  is,  in 
my  judgment,  a  weighty  consideration.] 


636  JEFFERSON'S   WORKS. 

The  possibility  that  the  government  of  France  may  become 
so  settled  as  that  we  may  hazard  the  anticipation  of  payment, 
and  so  avoid  dead  interest. 
.    The  reasons  against  it  are, 

The  possibility  that  France  may  continue,  for  some  time  yet, 
so  unsettled  as  to  render  an  anticipation  of  payments  hazardous. 

The  risk  of  losing  the  capital  borrowed  by  a  successful  inva- 
sion of  the  country  of  deposit,  if  it  be  left  in  Europe  ;  or  by  an 
extension  of  the  bankruptcies  now  shaking  the  most  solid 
houses ;  and  when  and  where  they  will  end  we  know  not. 

The  loss  of  interest  on  the  dead  sum,  if  the  sum  itself  be 
safe. 

The  execution  of  a  power  for  one  object,  which  was  given  to 
be  executed  but  for  a  very  different  one. 

The  commitment  of  the  President,  on  this  account,  to  events, 
or  to  the  criticisms  of  those  who,  though  the  measures  should  be 
perfectly  wise,  may  misjudge  it  through  error  or  passion. 

The  apprehension  that  the  head  of  the  department  means  to 
provide  idle  money  to  be  lodged  in  the  banks  ready  for  the  cor- 
ruption of  the  next  legislature,  as  it  is  believed  the  late  ones 
were  corrupted,  by  gratifying  particular  members  with  vast  dis- 
counts for  objects  of  speculation. 

T  confess  that  the  last  reasons  have  most  weight  with  me. 


XL. — Report  on  the  privileges  and  restrictions  on  the  commerce 
of  the  United  States  in  foreign  countries. 

December  16,  1798. 
Sir, — According  to  the  pleasure  of  the  House  of  RepresentatiTes,  expressed  iu 
their  resolution  of  February  23,  1791,  I  now  lay  before  them  a  report  on  the  privi- 
leges and  restrictions  on  the  commerce  of  the  United  States  in  foreign  countries. 
Iq  orj}PT  to  keep  the  subject  within  those  bounds  which  I  supposed  to  be  under 
the  contemplation  of  the  House,  I  have  restrained  my  statements  to  those  coun- 
tries only  with  which  we  carry  on  a  commerce  of  some  importance,  and  to  those 
articles  also  of  our  produce  which  arc  of  sensible  weight  in  the  scale  of  our  ex- 
ports; and  even  these  articles  are  sometimes  grouped  together,  according  to  the 
degree  of  favor  or  restriction  with  which  they  are  received  in  each  country,  and 
that  degree  eSpressed  in  general  terms  without  detailing  the  exact  duty  levied 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  637 

wH  each  article.  To  have  gone  fully  into  these  minutise,  would  have  been  to  copy 
the  tariffs  and  books  of  rates  of  the  different  countries,  and  to  have  hidden,  under 
a  mass  of  details,  those  general  and  important  truths,  the  extraction  of  which, 
in  a  simple  form,  I  conceived  would  best  answer  the  inquiries  of  the  House,  by 
condensing  material  information  within  those  limits  of  time  and  attention,  which 
this  portion  of  their  duties  may  justly  claim.  ^JThe  plan,  indeed,  of  minute  details 
which  have  been  impracticable  with  some  countrie^'^f  want  of  information. 

Since  preparing  this  report,  which  was  put  into  its  present  form  in  time  to 
have  been  given  in  to  the  last  session  of  Congress  alterations  of  the  conditions 
of  our  commerce  with  some  foreign  nations  have  taken  place — some  of  them  inde- 
pendent of  war ;  some  arising  out  of  it. 

France  has  proposed  to  enter  into  a  new  treaty  of  commerce  with  us,  on  liberal 
principles;  and  has,  in  the  meantime,  relaxed  some  of  the  restraints  mentioned  in 
the  report.  Spain  has,  by  an  ordinance  of  June  last,  established  New  Orleans, 
Pensaeola,  and  St.  Augustine  into  free  ports,  for  the  vessels  of  friendly  nations 
having  treaties  of  cmnmerce  with  her,  provided  they  touch  for  a  permit  at  Corcu- 
bion  in  Gallicia,  or  at  Alieant ;  and  our  rice  is,  by  the  same  ordinance,  excluded 
from  that  country.  The  circumstances  of  war  have  necessarily  given  us  freer  ac 
cess  to  the  West  Indian  islands,  whilst  they  have  also  drawn  on  our  navigation 
vexations  and  depredations  of  the  most  serious  nature. 

To  have  endeavored  to  describe  all  these,  would  have  been  as  impracticable  as 
useless,  since  the  scenes  would  have  been  shifting  while  under  description.  I 
therefore  think  it  best  to  leave  the  report  as  it  was  formed,  being  adapted  to  a 
particular  point  of  time,  when  things  were  in  their  settled  order,  that  is  to  say, 
to  the  summer  of  1792.     I  have  the  honor  to  be,  <fec. 

To  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives  of  the  United  States  of  America. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  to  ■whom  was  referred,  by  the  House  of 
Representatives,  the  report  of  a  committee  on  the  written  mes- 
sage of  the  President  of  the  United  States,  of  the  14th  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1791,  with  instruction  to  report  to  Congress  the  nature 
and  extent  of  the  privileges  and  restrictions  of  the  commercial 
intercourse  of  the  United  States  with  foreign  nations,  and  the 
measures  which  he  should  think  proper  to  be  adopted  for  the 
improvement  of  the  commerce  and  navigation  of  the  same, 
has  had  the  same  under  consideration,  and  thereupon  makes 
the  following  Report : 

The  countries  with  which  the  United  States  have  their  chief 
commercial  intercourse  are' Spain,  Portugal,  France,  Great  Britain, 
the  United  Netherlands,  Denmark,  and  Sweden,  and  their  Amer- 
ican possessions  ;  and  the  articles  of  export,  which  constitute  the 
basis  of  that  commerce,  with  their  respective  amounts,  are, 


638  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

Bread-stuff,  that  is  to  say,  bread  grains,  meals,  and  bread,  to 

the  annual  amount  of $7,649,887 

Tobacco • 4,349,56'? 

Rice 1,'753,'796 

Wood 1,263,534 

Salted  fish 941,696 

Pot  and  pearl  ash 839,093 

Salted  meats 699,130 

Indigo , 63'7,S79 

Horses  and  mules 339,753 

'  Whale  oil 252,591 

Flaxseed. 236,072 

Tar,  pitch  and  turpentine 217,177 

Live  provisions 137,743 

Ships 

Foreign  goods 620,274 

To  descend  to  articles  of  smaller  value  than  these,  ■would  lead 
into  a  minuteness  of  detail  neither  necessary  nor  useful  to  the 
present  object. 

The  proportions  of  our  exports,  which  go  to  the  nations  before 
mentioned,  and  to  their  dominions,  respectively,  are  as  follows : 

To  Spain  and  its  dominions $2  005,907 

Portugal  and  its  dominions 1,283,462 

France  and  its  dominions 4,698,735 

Great  Britain  and  its  dominions 9,363,416 

The  United  Netherlands  and  their  dominions 1,963,880 

Denmark  and  its  dominions 224,416 

Sweden  and  its  dominions 47,240 

Our  imports  from  the  same  countries,  are, 

Spain  and  its  dominions 336,110 

Portugal  and  its  dominions 595,763 

France  and  its  dominions 2,068,348 

Great  Britain  and  its  dominions 15,285,428 

United  Netherlands  and  their  dominions .  1,172,692 

Denmark  and  its  dominions 351,364 

Sweden  and  its  dominions 14,326_ 

These  imports  consist  mostly  of  articles  on  which  industry  has 
been  exhausted. 

Our  navigation,  depending  on  the  same  commerce,  will  ap- 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  639 

pear  by  the  following  statement  of  the  tonnage  of  our  own  vessels, 
entering  in  our  ports,  from  those  several  nations  and  their  pos- 
sessions, in  one  year  ;  that  is  to  say ;  from  October,  1789,  to  Sep- 
tember, 1790,  inclusive,  as  follows : 

Tons. 

Spain • 19,695 

Portugal 23,576 

France 116,410 

Great  Britain 43,580 

United  BTetherlands 58,858 

Denmark 14,655 

Sweden 760 

Of  our  commercial  objects,  Spain  receives  favorably  our  bread- 
stuff, salted  fish,  wood,  ships,  tar,  pitch,  and  turpentine.  On  our 
meals,  however,  as  well  as  on  those  of  other  fgreign  countries, 
when  re-exported  to  their  colonies,  they  have  lately  imposed  duties 
of  from  half-a-dollar  to  two  dollars  the  barrel,  the  duties  being  so 
proportioned  to  the  current  price  of  their  own  flour,  as  that  both 
together  are  to  make  the  constant  sum  of  nine  dollars  per  barrel. 

They  do  not  discourage  our  rice,  pot  and  pearl  ash,  salted  pro- 
visions, or  whale  oil ;  but  these  articles,  being  in  small  demand 
at  their  markets,  are  carried  thither  but  in  a  small  degree.  Their 
demand  for  rice,  however,  is  increasing.  Neither  tobacco  nor 
indigo  are  received  there.  Our  commerce  is  permitted  with  their 
Canary  islands  under  the  same  conditions. 

Themselves,  and  their  colonies,  are  the  actual  consumers  of 
what  they  receive  from  us. 

Our  navigation  is  free  with  the  kingdom  of  Spain ;  foreign 
goods  being  received  there  in  our  ships  on  the  same  conditions 
as  if  carried  in  their  own,  or  in  the  vessels  of  the  country  of 
which  such  goods  are  the  manufacture  or  produce. 

Portugal  receives  favorably  our  grain  and  bread,  salted  fish, 
and  other  salted  provisions,  wood,  tar,  pitch,  and  turpentine. 

For  flax-seed,  pot  and  pearl  ash,  though  not  discouraged,  there 
is  little  demand. 

Our  ships  pay  20  per  cent,  on  being  sold  to  their  subjects,  and 
are  then  free-bottoms. 


640  JEFFEESON'S    WORKS. 

Foreign  goods  (except  those  of  the  East  Indies)  are  received 
on  the  same  footing  in  our  vessels  as  in  their  own,  or  any  others ; 
that  is  to  say,  on  general  duties  of  from  20  to  28  per  cent.,  and, 
consequently,  our  navigation  is  unobstructed  by  them.  Tobacco, 
rice,  and  meals,  are  prohibited. 

Themselves  and  their  colonies  consume  what  they  receive 
from  us. 

These  regulations  extend  to  the  Azores,  Madeira,  and  the  Cape 
de  Verd  islands,  except  that  in  these,  meals  and  rice  are  received 
freely. 

France  receives  favorably  our  bread-stuffs,  rice,  wood,  pot  and 
pearl  ashes. 

A  duty  of  5  sous  the  quintal,  or  nearly  4'r  cents,  is  paid  on  our 
tar,  pitch,  and  turpentine.  Our  whole  oils  pay  6  livres  the  quin- 
tal, and  are  the  only  foreign  whale  oils  admitted.  Our  indigo 
pays  5  livres  the  quintal,  their  own  21- ;  but  a  difference  of  quali- 
ty, still  more  than  a  difference  of  duty,  prevents  its  seeking  that 
market. 

Salted  beef  is  received  freely  for  re-exportation ;  but  if  for 
home  consumption,  it  pays  five  livres  the  quintal.  Other  salted 
provisions  pay  that  duty  in  all  cases,  and  salted  fish  is  made  lately 
to  pay  the  prohibitory  one  of  twenty  livres  the  quintal. 

Our  ships  are  free  to  carry  thither  all  foreign  goods  which 
may  be  carried  in  their  own  or  any  other  vessels,  except  tobac- 
coes  not  of  our  own  growth ;  and  they  participate  with  theirs, 
the  exclusive  carriage  of  our  whale  oils  and  tobaccoes. 

During  their  former  government,  our  tobacco  was  under  a 
monopoly,  but  paid  no  duties  ;  and  our  ships  were  freely  sold  in 
their  ports,  and  converted  into  national  bottoms.  The  first  na- 
tional assembly  took  from  our  ships  this  privilege.  They  emanci- 
pated tobacco  from  its  monopoly,  but  subjected  it  to  duties  of 
eighteen  livres,  fifteen  sous  the  quintal,  carried  in  their  own  ves- 
sels, and  five  livres  carried  in  ours — a  di  (Fere nee  more  than  equal 
to  the  freight  of  the  article. 

They  and  their  colonies  consume  what  they  receive  from  us. 

Great  Britain  receives  our  pot  and  pearl  ashes  free,  whilst 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  641 

those  of  other  nations  pay  a  duty  of  two  shilhngs  and  three  pence 
the  quintal.  There  is  an  equal  distinction  in  favor  of  our  bai 
iron ;  of  which  article,  however,  we  do  not  produce  enough  for 
our  own  use.  Woods  are  free  from  us,  whilst  they  pay  some 
small  duty  from  other  countries.  Indigo  and  flax  seed  are  free 
from  all  countries.  Our  tar  and  pitch  pay  eleven  pence,  sterling, 
the  barrel.  From  other  alien  countries  they  pay  about  a  penny 
and  a  third  more. 

Our  tobacco,  for  their  own  consumption,  pays  one  shilling  and 
three  pence,  sterling,  the  pound,  custom  and  excise,  besides 
heavy  expenses  of  collection  ;  and  rice,  in  the  same  case,  pays 
seven  shillings  and  fourpence,  sterling,  the  hundred  weight ; 
which,  rendering  it  too  dear,  as  an  article  of  common  food,  it  is 
consequently  used  in  very  small  quantity. 

Our  salted  fish  and  other  salted  provisions,  except  bacon,  are 
prohibited.  Bacon  and  whale  oils  are  under  prohibitory  duties  , 
so  are  our  grains,  meals,  and  bread,  as  to  internal  consumption, 
unless  in  times  of  such  scarcity  as  may  raise  the  price  of  wheat 
to  fifty  shillings,  sterling,  the  quarter,  and  other  grains  and  meals 
in  proportion. 

Our  ships,  though  purchased  and  navigated  by  their  own  sub- 
jects, are  not  permitted  to  be  used,  even  in  their  trade  with  us. 

While  the  vessels  of  other  nations  are  secured  by  standing 
laws,  which  cannot  be  altered  but  by  the  concurrent  will  of  the 
three  branches  of  the  British  legislature,  in  carrying  thither  aay 
produce  or  manufacture  of  the  country  to  which  they  belong, 
which  may  be  lawfully  carried  in  any  vessels,  ours,  with  the 
same  prohibition  of  what  is  foreign,  are  further  prohibited  by  a 
standing  law,  (12  Car.  2,  18,  sect.  3,)  from  carrying  thither  all 
and  any  of  our  own  domestic  productions  and  manufactures.  A 
subsequent  act,  indeed,  has  authorized  their  executive  to  permit 
the  carriage  of  our  own  productions  in  our  own  bottoms,  at  its 
sole  discretion  ;  and  the  permission  has  been  given  from  year  to 
year  by  proclamation,  but  subject  every  moment  to  be  withdrawn 
on  that  single  will ;  in  which  event,  our  vessels  having  anything 
m  board,  stand  interdicted  from  the   entry  of  all   British  ports 

VOL.    VII.  41 


642  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

The  disadvantage  of  a  tei.ure  which  may  be  so  suddenly  discon- 
tinued, was  experienced  by  our  merchants  on  a  late  occasion,* 
when  an  official  notification  that  this  law  would  be  strictly  en- 
forced, gave  them  just  apprehensions  for  the  fate  of  their  vessels 
and  cargoes  despatched  or  destined  for  the  ports  of  Great  Britain. 
The  minister  of  that  court,  indeed,  frankly  expressed  his  personal 
conviction,  that  the  words  of  the  order  went  farther  than  was 
intended,  and  so  he  afterwards  officially  informed  us ;  but  the 
embarrassments  of  the  moment  were  real  and  great,  and  the 
possibility  of  their  renewal  lays  our  commerce  to  that  country 
under  the  same  species  of  discouragement  as  to  other  countries, 
where  it  is  regulated  by  a  single  legislator  ;  and  the  distinction  is 
too  remarkable  not  to  be  noticed,  that  our  navigation  is  excluded 
from  the  security  of  fixed  laws,  while  that  security  is  given  to 
the  navigation  of  others. 

Our  vessels  pay  in  their  ports  one  shilling  and  nine  pence,  ster- 
ling, per  ton,  light  and  trinity  dues,  more  than  is  paid  by  British 
ships,  except  in  the  port  of  London,  where  they  pay  the  same  as 
British. 

The  greater  part  of  what  they  receive  from  us,  is  re-exported 
to  other  countries,  under  the  useless  charges  of  an  intermediate 
deposit,  and  double  voyage.  From  tables  published  in  England, 
and  composed,  as  is  said,  from  the  books  of  their  customhouses, 
it  appears,  that  of  the  indigo  imported  there  in  the  years  1773, 
'4,  '5,  one-third  was  re-exported ;  and  from  a  document  of 
authority,  we  learn,  that  of  the  rice  and  tobacco  imported  there 
before  the  war,  four-fifths  were  re-exported.  We  are  assured, 
indeed,  that  the  quantities  sent  thither  for  re-exportation  since 
the  war,  are  considerably  diminished,  yet  less  so  than  reason  and 
national  interest  would  dictate.  The  whole  of  our  grain  is  re- 
exported when  wheat  is  below  fifty  shillings  the  quarter,  and 
other  grains  in  proportion. 

The  United  Netherlands  prohibit  our  pickled  beef  and  pork, 
meals  and  bread  of  all  sorts,  and  lay  a  prohibitory  duty  on  spirits 
distilled  from  grain. 

*  April  12,  1792. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  643 

All  other  of  onr  productions  are  received  on  varied  duties, 
which  may  be  reckoned,  on  a  medium,  at  about  three  per  cent. 

They  consume  but  a  small  proportion  of  what  they  receive. 
The  residue  is  partly  forwarded  for  consumption  in  the  inland 
parts  of  Europe,  and  partly  re-shipped  to  other  maritime  coun- 
tries. On  the  latter  portion  they  intercept  between  us  and  the 
consumer,  so  much  of  the  value  as  is  absorbed  in  the  charges  at- 
tending an  intermediate  deposit. 

Foreign  goods,  except  some  East  India  articles,  are  received  in 
vessels  of  any  nation. 

Our  ships  may  be  sold  and  neutralized  there,  with  excep- 
tions of  one  or  two  privileges,  which  somewhat  lessen  their  value. 

Denfimark  lays  considerable  duties  on  our  tobacco  and  rice,  car- 
ried in  their  own  vessels,  and  half  as  much  more,  if  carried  in  ours ; 
but  the  exact  amount  of  these  duties  is  not  perfectly  known  here 
They  lay  such  as  amount  to  prohibitions  on  our  indigo  and  corn. 

Sweden  receives  favorably  our  grains  and  meals,  salted  pro- 
visions, indigo,  and  whale  oil. 

They  subject  our  rice  to  duties  of  sixteen  mills  the  pound 
weight,  carried  in  their  own  vessels,  and  of  forty  per  cent,  ad- 
ditional on  that,  or  twenty-two  and  four-tenths  mills,  carried  in 
ours  or  any  others.  Being  thus  rendered  too  dear  as  an  article 
of  common  food,  little  of  it  is  consumed  with  them.  They  con- 
sume some  of  our  tobaccoes,  which  they  take  circuitously  through 
Great  Britain,  levying  heavy  duties  on  them  also  ;  their  duties  of 
entry,  tov/n  duties,  and  excise,  being  4.34  dollars  the  hundred 
weight,  if  carried  in  their  own  vessels,  and  of  forty  per  cent,  on 
that  additional,  if  carried  in  our  own  or  any  other  vessels. 

They  prohibit  altogether  our  bread,  fish,  pot  and  pearl  ashes, 
flax-seed,  tar,  pitch,  and  turpentine,  wood,  (except  oak  timber 
and  masts,)  and  all  foreign  manufactures. 

Under  so  many  restrictions  and  prohibitions,  our  navigation 
with  them  is  reduced  to  almost  nothing. 
With  our  neighbors,  an  order  of  things  much  harder  presents  itself. 

Spain  and  Portugal  refuse,  to  all  those  parts  of  America 
ivhich  they  govern,  all  direct  intercourse  with  anv  people  but 


644  JEFFKRSON'S    WORKS. 

themselves.  The  commodities  in  mutual  demand  between  them 
and  their  neighbors,  must  be  carried  to  be  exchanged  in  some 
port  of  the  dominant  country,  and  the  transportation  betweea 
that  and  the  subject  state,  must  be  in  a  domestic  bottom. 

France,  by  a  standing  law,  permits  her  West  India  possessions 
to  receive  directly  our  vegetables,  live  provisions,  horses,  wood, 
tar,  pitch,  turpentine,  rice,  and  maize,  and  prohibits  our  other 
bread  stuiF;  but  a  suspension  of  this  prohibition  having  been 
left  to  the  colonial  legislatures,  in  times  of  scarcity,  it  was  for- 
merly suspended  occasionally,  but  latterly  without  interruption. 

Our  fish  and  salted  provisions  (except  pork)  are  received  in 
their  islands  under  a  duty  of  three  colonial  livres  the  quintal,  and 
our  vessels  are  as  free  as  their  own  to  carry  our  commodities 
thither,  and  to  bring  away  rum  and  molasses. 

Great  Britain  admits  in  her  islands  our  vegetables,  live  pro- 
visions, horses,  wood,  tar,  pitch,  and  turpentine,  rice  and  bread 
stuff,  by  a  proclamation  of  her  executive,  limited  always  to  the 
term  of  a  year,  but  hitherto  renewed  from  year  to  year.  She 
prohibits  our  salted  fish  and  other  salted  provisions.  She  does  not 
permit  our  vessels  to  carry  thither  our  own  produce.  Her  vessels 
alone  may  take  it  from  us,  and  bring  in  exchange  rum,  molasses, 
sugar,  coffee,  cocoa-n'its,  ginger,  and  pimento.  There  are,  in- 
deed, some  freedoms  in  the  island  of  Dominica,  but,  under  such 
circumstances,  as  to  be  little  used  by  us.  In  the  British  conti- 
nental colonies,  and  in  Newfoundland,  all  our  productions  are 
prohibited,  and  our  vessels  forbidden  to  enter  their  ports.  Their 
governors,  however,  in  times  of  distress,  have  power  to  permit 
a  temporary  importation  of  certain  articles  in  their  own  bottoms, 
but  not  in  ours. 

Our  citizens  cannot  reside  as  merchants  or  factors  within  any  of 
the  British  plantations,  this  being  expressly  prohibited  by  the  same 
statute  of  12  Car.  2,  c.  18,  commonly  called  the  navigation  act. 

In  the  Danish  American  possessions  a  duty  of  5  per  cent,  is 
'evied  on  our  corn,  corn  meal,  rice,  tobacco,  wood,  salted  fish, 
indigo,  horses,  mules  and  live  stock,  and  of  10  per  cent,  on  our 
flour,  salted  pork  and  beef,  tar,  pitch  and  turpentine. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  645 

In  the  American  islands  of  the  United  Netherlands  and  Swe- 
den, our  vessels  and  produce  are  received,  subject  to  duties,  not 
so  heavy  as  to  have  been  complained  of ;  but  they  are  heavier 
m  the  Dutch  possessions  on  the  continent. 

To  sum  up  these  restrictions,  so  far  as  they  are  important : 

First.     In  Europe — 

Our  bread  stuff  is  at  most  times  under  prohibitory  duties  in 
England,  and  considerably  dutied  on  re-exportation  from  Spain 
to  her  colonies. 

Our  tobaccoes  are  heavily  dutied  in  England,  Sweden  and 
France,  and  prohibited  in  Spain  and  Portugal. 

Our  rice  is  heavily  dutied  in  England  and  Sweden,  and  pro- 
hibited in  Portugal. 

Our  fish  and  salted  provisions  are  prohibited  in  England,  and 
under  prohibitory  duties  in  France. 

Our  whale  oils  are  prohibited  in  England  and  Portugal. 

And  our  vessels  are  denied  naturalization  in  England,  and  of 
late  in  France. 

Second.     In  the  West  Indies — 

All  intercourse  is  prohibited  with  the  possessions  of  Spain  and 
Portugal. 

Our  salted  provisions  and  fish  are  prohibited  by  England. 

Our  salted  pork  and  bread  stuff  (except  maize)  are  received 
under  temporary  laws  only,  in  the  dominions  of  France,  and  our 
salted  fish  pays  there  a  weighty  duty. 

Third.     In  the  article  of  navigation — 

Our  own  carriage  of  our  own  tobacco  is  heavily  dutied  in 
Sweden,  and  lately  in  France. 

We  can  carry  no  article,  not  of  our  own  production,  to  the 
British  ports  in  Europe.  Nor  even  our  own  produce  to  her 
American  possessions. 

Such  being  the  restrictions  on  the  commerce  and  navigation 
of  the  United  States ;  the  question  is,  in  what  way  they  may 
best  bs  removed,  modified  or  counteracted  ? 

As  to  commerce,  two  methods  occur.  1.  By  friendly  arrange- 
ments with  the  several'nations  with  whom  these  restrictions  es- 


646  JEFFERSON'S    "WOEE.S. 

ist :  Or,  2.  By  the  separate  act  of  our  own  legislatures  for  coun- 
tervailing their  effects. 

There  can  he  no  doubt  hut  that  of  these  two,  friendly  arrange- 
ment is  the  most  eligible.  Instead  of  embarrassing  commerce 
under  piles  of  regulating  laws,  duties  and  prohibitions,  could  it 
be  relieved  from  all  its  shackles  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  could 
every  country  be  employed  in  producing  that  which  nature  has 
best  fitted  it  to  produce,  and  each  be  free  to  exchange  with  oth- 
ers mutual  sLirplusses  for  mutual  wants,  the  greatest  mass  possi- 
ble would  then  be  produced  of  those  things  which  contribute  to 
human  life  and  human  happiness  ;  the  numbers  of  mankind 
would  be  increased,  and  their  condition  bettered. 

Would  even  a  single  nation  begin  with  the  United  States  this 
system  of  free  commerce,  it  would  be  advisable  to  begin  it  with 
that  nation  ;  since  it  is  one  by  one  only  that  it  can  be  extended 
to  all.  Where  the  circumstances  of  either  party  render  it  ex- 
pedient to  levy  a  revenue,  by  way  of  impost,  on  commerce,  its 
freedom  might  be  modified,  in  that  particular,  by  mutual  and 
equivalent  measures,  preserving  it  entire  in  all  others. 

Some  nations,  not  yet  ripe  for  free  commerce  in  all  its  extent, 
might  still  be  willing  to  mollify  its  restrictions  and  regulations 
for  us,  in  proportion  to  the  advantages  which  an  intercourse  with 
us  might  offer.  Particularly  they  may  concur  with  us  in  re- 
ciprocating the  duties  to  be  levied  on  each  side,  or  in  compen- 
sating any  excess  of  duty  by  equivalent  advantages  of  another 
nature.  Our  commerce  is  certainly  of  a  character  to  entitle  it  to 
favor  in  most  countries.  The  commodities  we  offer  are  either 
necessaries  of  life,  or  materials  for  manufacture,  or  convenient 
subjects  of  revenue  ;  and  we  take  in  exchange,  either  manufac- 
tures, when  they  have  received  the  last  finish  of  art  and  industry, 
or  mere  luxuries.  Such  customers  may  reasonably  expect  wel- 
come and  friendly  treatment  at  every  market.  Customers,  too, 
whose  demands,  increasing  with  their  wealth  and  population, 
must  very  shortly  give  full  emploj'ment  to  the  whole  industry  of 
any  nation  whatever,  in  any  line  of  supply  they  may  get  into 
the  habit  of  calling  for  from  it. 


UFFIOIAL    PAPERS;  647 

But  should  any  nation,  contrary  to  our  wishes,  suppose  it  may 
better  find  its  advantage  by  continuing  its  system  of  prohibitions, 
duties  and  regulations,  it  behooves  us  to  protect  our  citizens,  their 
commerce  and  navigation,  by  counter  prohibitions,  duties  and 
regulations,  also.  Free  commerce  and  navigation  are  not  to  be 
given  in  exchange  for  restrictions  and  vexations ;  nor  are  they 
likely  to  produce  a  relaxation  of  them. 

Our  navigation  involves  still  higher  considerations.  As  a 
branch  of  industry,  it  is  Araluable,  but  as  a  resource  of  defence, 
essential. 

Its  value,  as  a  branch  of  industry,  is  enhanced  by  the  depend- 
ence of  so  many  other  branches  on  it.  In  times  of  general 
peace  it  multiplies  competitors  for  employment  in  transportation, 
and  so  keeps  that  at  its  proper  level ;  and  in  times  of  war,  that 
is  to  say,  when  those  nations  who  may  be  our  principal  carriers, 
shall  be  at  war  with  each  other,  if  we  have  not  within  ourselves 
the  means  of  transportation,  our  produce  must  be  exported  in 
belligerent  vessels,  at  the  increased  expense  of  war-freight  and 
insurance,  and  the  articles  which  will  not  bear  that,  must  perish 
on  our  hands. 

But  it  is  as  a  resource  of  defence  that  our  navigation  will  ad- 
mit neither  neglect  nor  forbearance.  The  position  and  circum- 
stances of  the  United  States  leave  them  nothing  to  fear  on  their 
land-board,  and  nothing  to  desire  beyond  their  present  rights. 
But  on  their  seaboard,  they  are  open  to  injury,  and  they  have 
there,  too,  a  commerce  which  must  be  protected.  This  can  only 
be  done  by  possessing  a  respectable  body  of  citizen-seamen,  and 
of  artists  and  establishments  in  readiness  for  ship-building. 

Were  the  ocean,  which  is  the  common  property  of  all,  open 
to  the  industry  of  all,  so  that  every  person  and  vessel  should  be 
free  to  take  employment  wherever  it  could  be  found,  the  United 
States  would  certainly  not  set  the  example  of  appropriating  to 
themselves,  exclusively,  any  portion  of  the  common  stock  of 
occupation.  They  would  rely  on  the  enterprise  and  activity 
of  their  citizens  for  a  due  participation  of  the  benefits  of  the 
seafaring   business,  and   for  keeping  the  marine  class  of  citi- 


648  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

zens  equal  to  their  object.  But  if  particular  nations  grasp  at  un- 
due shares,  and,  more  especially,  if  they  seize  on  the  means  of 
the  United  States,  to  convert  them  into  aliment  for  their  own 
strength,  and  withdraw  them  entirely  from  the  support  of  those 
to  whom  they  belong,  defensive  and  protecting  measures  become 
necessary  on  the  part  of  the  nation  whose  marine  resources  are 
thus  invaded  ;  or  it  will  be  disarmed  of  its  defence  ;  its  produc- 
tions will  lie  at  the  mercy  of  the  nation  which  has  possessed 
itself  exclusively  of  the  means  of  carrying  them,  and  its  politics 
may  be  influenced  by  those  who  command  its  commerce.  The 
carriage  of  our  own  commodities,  if  once  established  in  another 
channel,  cannot  be  resumed  in  the  moment  we  may  desire.  If 
we  lose  the  seamen  and  artists  whom  it  now  occupies,  we  lose 
the  present  means  of  marine  defence,  and  time  will  be  requisite 
to  raise  up  others,  when  disgrace  or  losses  shall  bring  home  to 
our  feelings  the  error  of  having  abandoned  them.  The  materi- 
als for  maintaining  our  due  share  of  navigation,  are  ours  in  abun- 
dance. And,  as  to  the  mode  of  using  them,  we  have  only  to 
adopt  the  principles  of  those  who  put  us  on  the  defensive,  or 
others  equivalent  and  better  fitted  to  our  circumstances. 

The  following  principles,  being  founded  in  reciprocity,  ap- 
pear perfectly  just,  and  to  offer  no  cause  of  complaint  to  any  na- 
tion : 

1.  Where  a  nation  imposes  high  duties  on  our  productions,  or 
prohibits  them  altogether,  it  may  be  proper  for  us  to  do  the  same 
by  theirs  ;  first  burdening  or  excluding  those  productions  which 
they  bring  here,  in  competition  with  our  own  of  the  same  kind ; 
selecting  next,  such  manufactures  as  we  take  from  them  in  great- 
est quantity,  and  which,  at  the  same  time,  we  could  the  soonest 
furnish  to  ourselves,  or  obtain  from  other  countries ;  imposing 
on  them  duties  lighter  at  fij:st,  but  heavier  and  heavier  after- 
wards, as  other  channels  of  supply  open.  Such  duties  having 
ifae  eflfect  of  indirect  encouragement  to  domestic  manufactures 
of  the  same  kind,  may  induce  the  manufacturer  to  come  himself 
into  these  States,  where  cheaper  subsistence,  equal  laws,  and  a 
vent  of  his   wares,  free  of  duty,  may  ensure  him  the  highest 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  649 

profits  from  his  skill  and  industry.  And  here,  it  would  be  in 
the  power  of  the  State  governments  to  co-operate  essentially,  by 
opening  the  resources  of  encouragement  which  are  under  their 
control,  extending  them  liberally  to  artists  in  those  particular 
branches  of  manufacture  for  which  their  soil,  climate,  population 
and  other  circumstances  have  matured  them,  and  fostering  the 
precious  efforts  and  progress  of  household  manufacture,  by  some 
patronage  suited  to  the  nature  of  its  objects,  guided  by  the  local 
informations  they  possess,  and  guarded  against  abuse  by  their 
presence  and  attentions.  The  oppressions  on  our  agriculture,  in 
foreign  ports,  would  thus  be  made  the  occasion  of  relieiMng  it 
from  a  dependence  on  the  councils  and  conduct  of  others,  and 
of  promoting  arts,  manufactures  and  population  at  home. 

2.  Where  a  nation  refuses  permission  to  our  merchants  and 
factors  to  reside  within  certain  parts  of  their  dominions,  we  may, 
if  it  should  be  thought  expedient,  refuse  residence  to  theirs  in 
any  and  every  part  of  ours,  or  modify  their  transactions. 

3.  Where  a  nation  refuses  to  receive  in  our  vessels  any  pro- 
ductions but  our  own,  we  may  refuse  to  receive,  in  theirs,  any 
but  their  own  productions.  The  first  and  second  clauses  of  the 
bill  reported  by  the  committee,  are  well  formed  to  effect  this  object 

4.  Where  a  nation  refuses  to  consider  any  vessel  as  ours  which 
has  not  been  built  within  our  territories,  we  should  refuse  to  con- 
sider as  theirs,  any  vessel  not  built  within  their  territories. 

5.  Where  a  nation  refuses  to  our  vessels  the  carriage  even  of 
our  own  productions,  to  certain  countries  under  their  domination, 
we  might  refuse  to  theirs  of  every  description,  the  carriage  of  the 
same  productions  to  the  same  countries.  But  as  justice  and  good 
neighborhood  would  dictate  that  those  who  have  no  part  in  im- 
posing the  restriction  on  us,  should  not  be  the  victims  of  measures 
adopted  to  defeat  its  effect,  it  may  be  proper  to  confine  the  re- 
striction to  vessels  owned  or  navigated  by  any  subjects  of  the 
same  dominant  power,  other  than  the  inhabitants  of  the  country 
to  which  the  said  productions  are  to  be  carried.  And  to  prevent 
all  inconvenience  to  the  said  inhabitants,  and  to  our  own,  by  toe 
sudden  a  check  on  the   means  of  transportation,  we   may  con- 


650  JEFFEKSOK'S    WORKS. 

tinue  to  admit  the  vessels  marked  for  future  exclusion,  on  an  ad- 
vanced tonnage,  and  for  such  length  of  time  only,  as  may  be 
supposed  necessary  to  provide  against  that  inconvenience. 

The  establishment  of  some  of  these  principles  by  Great  Brits 
ain,  alone,  has  already  lost  us  in  our  commerce  with  that  coun- 
try and  its  possessions,  between  eight  and  nine  hundred  vessels 
of  near  40,000  tons  burden,  according  to  statements  from  official 
materials,  in  which  they  have  confidence.  This  involves  a  pro- 
portional loss  of  seamen,  shipwrights,  and  ship-building,  and  is  too 
serious  a  loss  to  admit  forbearance  of  some  effectual  remedy. 

It  is  true  we  must  expect  some  inconvenience,  in  practice  from 
the  establishment  of  discriminating  duties.  But  in  this,  as  in 
so  many  other  cases,  we  are  left  to  choose  between  two  evils. 
These  inconveniences  are  nothing  when  weighed  against  the^ 
loss  of  wealth  and  loss  of  force,  which  will  follow  our  perse- 
verance in  the  plan  of  indiscrimination.  When  once  it  shall  be 
perceived  that  we  are  either  in  the  system  or  in  the  habit  of  giv- 
ing equal  advantages  to  those  who  extinguish  our  commerce  and 
navigation  by  duties  and  prohibitions,  as  to  those  who  treat  both 
with  liberality  and  justice,  liberality  and  justice  will  be  converted 
by  all  into  duties  and  prohibitions.  It  is  not  to  the  moderation 
and  justice  of  others  we  are  to  trust  for  fair  and  equal  access  to 
market  with  our  productions,  or  for  our  due  share  in  the  trans- 
portation of  them  ;  but  to  our  own  means  of  independence,  and 
the  firm  will  to  use  them.  Nor  do  the  inconveniences  of  dis- 
crimination merit  consideration.  Not  one  of  the  nations  before 
mentioned,  perhaps  not  a  commercial  nation  on  earth,  is  without 
them.  In  our  case  one  distinction  alone  will  suffice :  that  is  to 
say,  between  nations  who  favor  our  productions  and  navigation, 
and  those  who  do  not  favor  them.  One  set  of  moderate  duties,, 
say  the  present  duties,  for  the  first,  and  a  fixed  advance  on  these 
as  to  some  articles,  and  prohibitions  as  to  others,  for  the  last. 

Still,  it  must  be  repeated  that  friendly  arrangements  are  prefer- 
able with  all  who  will  come  into  them  ;  and  that  we  should  carry 
into  such  arrangements  all  the  liberality  and  spirit  of  accommo- 
dation which  the  nature  of  the  case  will  admit. 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  651 

Prance  has,  of  her  own  accord,  proposed  negotiations  for  im- 
proving, by  a  new  treaty  on  fair  and  equal  principles,  the  com- 
mercial relations  of  the  two  countries.  But  her  internal  disturb- 
ances have  hitherto  prevented  the  prosecution  of  them  to  effect, 
though  we  have  had  repeated  assurances  of  a  continuance  of  the 
disposition. 

Proposals  of  friendly  arrangement  have  been  made  on  our 
part,  by  the  present  government,  to  that  of  Great  Britain,  as  the 
message  states  ;  but,  being  already  on  as  good  a  footing  in  law, 
and  a  better  in  fact,  than  the  most  favored  nation,  they  have  not, 
as  yet,  discovered  any  disposition  to  have  it  meddled  with. 

We  have  no  reason  to  conclude  that  friendly  arrangements  ■ 
would  be  declined  by  the  other  nations,  with  whom  we  have 
such  commercial  intercourse  as  may  render  them  important.  In 
the  meanwhile,  it  would  rest  with  the  wisdom  of  Congress  to 
determine  whether,  as  to  those  nations,  they  will  not  surcease 
ex  parte  regulations,  on  the  reasonable  presumption  that  they 
will  concur  in  doing  whatever  justice  and  moderation  dictate 
should  be  done. 


XLI. — Report  on  the  Mint.     Communicated  to  the  Senate, 
December  31,  1793. 

Fmi-ADELPHIA,  Droember  30,  1193. 

Sir, — 1  am  informed,  by  the  Director  of  the  Mint,  that  an  im- 
pediment has  arisen  to  the  coinage  of  the  precious  metals,  which 
it  is  my  duty  to  lay  before  you. 

It  will  be  recollected,  that,  in  pursuance  of  the  authority 
vested  in  the  President,  by  Congress,  to  procure  artists  from 
abroad,  if  necessary,  Mr.  Drotz,  at  Paris,  so  well  known  by  the 
superior  style  of  his  coinage,  was  engaged  for  our  mint ;  but  that, 
after  occasioning  to  us  a  considerable  delay,  he  declined  coming. 
That  thereupon,  our  minister  at  London,  according  to  the  in- 
structions he  had  received,  endeavored  to  procure,  there,  a  chief 
coiner  and  assayer ;  that,  as  to  the  latter,  he  succeeded  in  sending 


652  JEFFERSON'S    WORKS. 

over  a  Mr.  Albion  Coxe,  for  that  ofSce,  but  that  he  could  procure 
no  person  there  more  qualified  to  discharge  the  duties  of  chief 
coiner,  than  might  be  had  here  ;  and,  therefore,  did  not  engage 
one.  The  duties  of  this  last  office  have  consequently  been, 
hitherto,  performed,  and  well  performed,  by  Henry  Voight,  an 
artist  of  the  United  States,  but  the  law  requiring  these  officers  to 
give  a  security,  in  the  sum  of  ten  thousand  dollars  each,  neither 
is  able  to  do  it.  The  coinage  of  the  precious  metals  has,  there- 
fore, been  prevented  for  some  time  past,  though,  in  order  that  the 
mint  might  not  be  entirely  idle,  the  coinage  of  copper  has  been 
going  on  ;  the  trust  in  that,  at  any  one  point  of  time,  being  of 
but  small  amount. 

It  now, remains  to  determine  how  this  difficulty  is  to  be  got 
over.  If  by  discharging  these  officers,  and  seeking  others,  it 
may  well  be  doubted  if  any  can  be  found  in  the  United  States, 
equally  capable  of  fulfilling  their  duties ;  and  to  seek  them  from 
abroad,  would  still  add  to  the  delay ;  and  if  found  either  at  home 
or  abroad,  they  must  still  be  of  the  description  of  artists  whose 
circumstances  and  connections  rarely  enable  them  to  give  security 
in  so  large  a  sum.  The  other  alternative  would  be  to  lessen  the 
securityship  in  money,  and  to  confide  that  it  will  be  supplied  by 
the  vigilance  of  the  director,  who,  leaving  as  small  masses  of 
metal  in  the  hands  of  the  officers,  at  any  one  time,  as  the  course 
of  their  process  will  admit,  may  reduce  the  risk  to  what  would 
not  be  considerable. 

To  give  an  idea  of  the  extent  of  the  trust  to  the  several  officers, 
both  as  to  sum  and  time,  it  may  be  proper  to  state  the  course  of 
the  business,  according  to  what  the  director  is  of  opinion  it  should 
be.  The  treasurer,  he  observes,  should  receive  the  bullion  ;  the 
ussayer,  by  an  operation  on  a  few  grains  of  it,  is  to  ascertain  its 
lliieiiess.  The  treasurer  is  then  to  deliver  it  to  the  refiner,  to 
be  melted  and  mixed  to  the  standard  fineness  ;  the  assayer  here, 
again,  examining  a  few  grains  of  the  melted  mass,  and  certify- 
ing when  it  is  of  due  fineness ;  the  refiner  then  delivers  it  to  the 
chief  coiner,  to  be  rolled  and  coined,  and  returns  it,  when  coined, 
to  the  treasurer.     By  this  it  appears,  that  a  few  grains  only,  at  a 


OFFICIAL    PAPERS.  653 

time,  are  in  the  hands  of  the  assayer,  the  mass  being  confided, 
for  operation,  to  the  refiner  and  chief  coiner.  It  is  to  be  ob- 
served that  the  law  has  not  taken  notice  of  the  office  of  refiner, 
though  so  important  an  officer  ought,  it  should  seem,  to  be  of 
the  President's  nomination,  and  ought  to  give  a  security  nearly 
equal  to  that  required  from  the  chief  coiner. 

I  have  thought  it  my  duty  to  give  this  information  under  an 
•impression  that  it  is  proper  to  be  communicated  to  the  Legisla- 
ture, who  will  decide,  in  their  wisdom,  whether  it  will  be  expe- 
dient to  make  it  the  duty  of  the  treasurer  to  receive  and  keep  the 
bullion  before  coinage  ; 

To  lessen  the  pecuniary  security  required  from  the  chief 
coiner  and  assayer  ;  and 

To  place  the  office  of  the  refiner  under  tne  same  nomination 
with  that  of  the  other  chief  officers  ;  to  fix  his  salary,  and  require 
due  security. 

I  have  the  honor  to  be,  with  the  most  perfect  respect  and 
attachment,  sir,  your  most  obedient  and  most  humble  servant. 


XND  OF  VOL.  vn. 


INDEX   TO    VOL.    VII. 


ipAMS,  John — His  estimate  of  life,  30. 
His  reading,  59,  69. 
His  religious  opinions,  59,  68,  219, 

2S0. 
Calumnies  of  Pickering  against,  58, 

62. 
His  views  of  metaphysics,  71. 
His  views  of  Bonaparte,  "71. 
Letter    of  condolence   to,  from    Mr. 

Jefferson,  107. 
Oldest  signer  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independeuee,  218,  219. 
Adams,  J.  Q. — Made  Secretary  of  State, 

86. 
Alexander,  Empekoe — His  character  and 

views,  20. 
ArvicE — Letter  of,  401. 
Anatomy — Experiments  in,  388. 
Anglo  Saxon — 'I'he  language,  416. 
Apocalypse,  The — View  o^  394. 
Astronomy — New  method  of  finding  lon- 
gitude, 223,  226. 

Banks — Evils  of  the  Banking  system,  64, 
111,  115. 
Suspension  of,  142. 
Di-tre?s  resulting  therefrom,  151. 
Jefferson's    pl.in  for  reducing  circu- 
lating medium,  146 
Barbary  States — Their  piracies,  250. 
Ertorts  to  redeem  Algerine  prisoners, 
532. 
BoLiNG  BROKE,  LoRD — His  writings,  197. 
Bonaparte — His  cliaracter,  275. 
Books — Should  be  imported  free  of  duty, 
220. 

Oampbkll,  Col. — Hero  of  King's  Moun- 
tain, 268, 

Capitol — Whether  there  should  be  any 
inscription  on  new  one,  41. 

Chemistry — Progress  of,  259. 

Cincinnati  Socikty — History  of,  868. 

Classics — The  study  of,  131. 

Climate — Of  western  country,  375, 

Coinage — Report  on  copper  coinage,  462. 
Report  on  coins,  weights  and  meas- 
ures, 472. 


Colonization  of  Neqeoes— Views  on,  332 
Commerce — Treaties  with  European  pow. 
ers,  436. 
Our  Mediterranean  trade,  519. 
Restriction  and  privileges  of  our  for- 
eign commerce,  636. 
Free  Trade,  how  far  practicable,  646 
Committees  of  Correspondence — Origin 

of,  120. 
Compensation  Law-  Unpopularity  of,  78. 
Congress — Whether  it  has  a  right  to  ad- 
journ to  a  new  place  of  meeting 
without  consent  of  President,  495. 
Consolidation— Dangers  of  223,  293,430. 

Rapid  strides  towards,  426,  430. 

Constitution— Rules  for  interpreting,  296, 

336,  342,  358. 

Distribution  of  powers  between  State 

and  Federal  governments,  297,  358. 

Who  the  final  arbiter  between  State 

and  Federal  governments,  298, 358. 

Should    be   easily   amendable,   323, 

336. 
Similarity  of  Constitutions  of  differ- 
ent States,  323. 
Courts,  County — Magistrates  of,  should 

be  elected  by  the  people,  12,  18. 
Cuba — Should  not  be  allowed  to  pass  to 
to  England,  288,  299. 
People  of,  how  affected,  299. 
Should  belong  to  tbe  U.  States,  316. 

David,  King — His  description  of  a  good 
man,  337. 

Debt,  Foreign — How  it  should  be  man- 
aged, 606. 

Drawbacks — Should  be  repealed,  6. 

Education — General  plan  of,  98,  187,  322, 
398. 
Female  education,  101. 
Northern   teachers    and   professors, 

187. 
Common  school  system  of  Virginia  a 
failure,  256. 
Eloquence — Models  of,  231 
Embargo — Circumstances   under   which. 
resorted  to,  373. 


656 


INDEX    TO   VOL.  VII. 


BImbarqo— Circumstaaoes  ■wbicli  led  to  its 

repeal,  425,  4S1. 
Treasonable  conduct  of  Massachusetts 

in  relation  to,  425,  431 
England — Feeling  of  towards  U.  States, 

42,  519. 
Debt  of,  43. 
Condition  and  prospects  of,  45,  48, 

232. 
Constitution  of,  48. 
Parties  in,  60. 
Discontents  in,  196. 
Origin  of  lier  constitution,  355. 
Effects  of  Norman  conquest,  413. 
Indemnity  for  slaves  carried  off  by, 

dui'ing  Revolutionary  war,  518. 
Commercial  relations  of,  -with  United 

States,  518. 
Epbope— Condition  of,  182,  193,  217,  244, 

288. 
Revolutions  in,  30'?. 
ExpATBiATioN— Exists  as  a  natural  right, 

n. 

Fkanoe — Condition  of,  66.  76. 

, .      Return  to,  of  Louis  XVIIL,  82. 

Constitution  of,  86. 

Allied  powers  depart,  109. 

Her  revolution,  302. 

Her  progress  in  science,  323. 

Whether  our   treaties  with,  remain 

Obligatory  after  her  revolution,  611. 

Not  allowed  to  equip  privateers  in 
our  ports,  226. 
Feanklin,  BifNJAMiN — Calumnies  against, 

108. 
FiSHEEiES — Report  on  Cod  fisheries,  588. 

History  of  Cod  fisheries,  638. 

History  of  whale  fisheries,  644. 

Generations — One  has  no  right  to  bind 

another,  16,  19,  311,  359. 
flovKENMKNT— Views  On,  3,  263,  307(  318, 
357. 
Should  reflect  will  of  people  in  all 

its  departments,  9,  319. 
Is  progressive,  15. 
Should  be  remodelled  from  time  to 

time,  14    19 
Principle  of  representation,  32. 
Must  be  adapted  to  each  particular 

people,  56. 
Majority  must  govern,  75. 
Europe  cannot  bear  republican  gov- 
ernment, 325. 
GlitEEE — Pronunciation  of,  112,  137. 
The  ablative  case  in,  272,  340. 
9bief — Its  uses  and  abuses.  38,  87. 


Hamilton,  A. — His  monarchical  prinoi 
pies,  389. 

HisTOET — Course  of,  indicated  for  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia,  412. 

Impeovement,  Inteenal — Progress  of,  75, 

422. 
Power  of,  does  not  belong  to  federal 

government,  79, 
Independence,  Deolaeation  of — Its  histo- 
ry, 122,  304. 
Jefferson's   opinion  of  Meclclenburg 

Declaration,  128. 
Authorship  of  407. 
Original  rough  draft  of,  409. 
The  house  in  which  written,  410. 
Celebration  of  50th  anniversary  of, 

450. 
Indians — Their  language,  96,  400. 
Plan  for  civilizing,  233. 
The  right  to  extinquish  Indian  titles 

belongs  to  federal  and  not  State 

governments,  467. 

Jay,  John — Why  he  did  not  sign  Declar- 
ation of  ludependeuee,  308. 
Jeffeeson,  Thomas — His  estimate  of  life, 
25,  421. 

Decay  of  his  faculties,  62,  179,  327. 

Resigned  to  death,  52,  243. 

Oppressed  by  correspondence,  54, 
254. 

His  occupations  in  his  old  age.  111, 
116. 

His  habits  of  life,  116. 

Materials  fur  his  biography,  117. 

Application  for  his  portrait,  203. 

Cumplalns  of  publication  of  his  let- 
ters, 222. 

Settlements  of  liis  accounts  on  his 
return  from  France,  239,  246. 

His  relations  with  J.  Adams,  314. 

Calumnies  of  Pickering,  362. 

His  relations  with  Washington  unaf 
fected  by  the  Mazzie  letter,  364. 

Their  friendship  uninterrupted  to  the 
last,  370. 

His  losses  by  security  debt,  433. 
JuDioiARy,  Federal — Decisions  of,  do  not 
biud  other  departments  of  the  gov- 
ernment, 184,  177. 

Each  department  decides  for  itself, 
134,  177. 

Danger  to  our  system  from  encroach- 
meuts  of,  192,  199,  216,  256,  278, 
293,  321,  403. 

Kentucky  Resolutions — Drawn  by  Jef- 
ferson, 229. 


INDEX    TO    VOL,  VII. 


657 


KosoiusKO — His  -will,  98. 

His  services  to  United  States,  106. 

La  Fayette — His  visit  to  United  States, 
318,  319. 

Lands,  Public — Settlements  on,  83. 

Langdon,  Governor — His  relations  "witli 
Jefferson,  154. 

Lakghage — la  progressslve,  174,  418. 

Law — Course  of  reading  in,  207. 

Common  law  no  part  of  law  of  Uni- 
ted States,  261. 
Christianity  no  part  of  common  law, 

359. 
Origin  of  common  law,  381. 

Law,  International — Principle  of  free 
ships  make  free  goods  <tc.,  not  law 
of  nations,  270. 

Lee,  R.  H. — Biography  of,  422. 

Lewis  and  Clarke — Journal  of  their  ex- 
pedition, 91. 

LrviNGSTON,  E. — His  code,  383,  483. 

Loan — Proposition  for  new  loan,  629. 

Lotteries — Jeifersou  applies  for  leave  to 
sell  his  property  by  lottery,  434. 

LomsuNA — Boundaries  of,  51. 

Manufactures — Whether  a  mark  should 
be  secured  to  each  by  law,  563. 

Materialism — Views  on,  153,  175. 

Mazzei  Letter — History  and  explanation 
of,  364. 

Metaphvsics — Views  on,  153, 176, 

Ministers — Senate  has  uo  right  to  nega- 
tive the  grade  of  a  minister,  it  can 
only  negative  the  person  appoint- 
ed by  the  Executive,  465. 

Missions,  Religious — To  foreign  States 
objectionable,  287. 

Mint — The  coiner  at  the  mint  unable  to 
give  security,  651. 

Mississippi  River — Our  right  to  navigate, 
568. 

Missouri  Question— 150,  151,  194,  200. 
Evil  of  a  geographical  line,  151, 158, 
159,  180,  182,  194. 

Monroe,  James — His  election  to  Presi- 
denai',  $0. 

jfjivy — Origin  of  navy  of  United  States, 
261,  264. 

IfEDTRALiTi- — A  neutral  nation  may  re- 
fuse belligerents  right  to  pass 
thi'ougli  its  territory,  509. 

Novels— Evil  of,  102. 

Offices — Rotation  in,  190. 
Optics — Views  on,  suggested,  258. 
OEiiDEV — Defects  of  modern,  347. 


Paine,  Thomas — His  writings,  197. 
Parties— History  of,  in  U.  S.,  277,  290 
Original  views  of  federal  and  repub- 
lican, 290. 
Republican  party  becomes   federal- 
ized, 326,  342. 
Necessity  of,  376. 

A  strong  monarchical  party  at  the 
beginning  of  our  governmeot,  390 
Posts,  North-western — England  refuses 
to  surrender,  518. 

Quakers — Character  of,  66. 

Randolph,  Peyton — Character  of,  20. 
Religion — Jeffei-son's  views  on,  28,   61, 
127,  164,  170,   185,  210,  245,  252 
257,  266,  269,  281. 
System  of  Jesus  compared  with  an- 
cient philosophers,  138,  156,  164, 
185. 
Jesus  as  a  reformer,  164. 
Modern  fanaticism,  170. 
Religious  iutolerance,  396. 
Representation — Bill  apportioning,  694 
Revolution,  The — Who  begun  it,  99, 103, 
121. 
Circumstances  attending  Declaration 
of  Independence,  122. 
Revolutionary  Debt — Those  due  soldiers 
of  North   Carolina   and   Virginia 
should  be  paid  to  themselves  and 
not  their  assignees,  469. 
Roman  People  and  Constitution-148,  160. 

Sciences — Distribution  of,  339. 
Progress  of  France  in,  327. 
Slaves — Not  entitled  to  be  represented, 
36. 
Emancipation  of,  58,  310. 
Amelioration   of  condition   of,  403, 

437. 
Re-capture  of  slaves  eseaped  to  Flor- 
ida,'601. 
Society — Its  progress,  377. 
South   Amkrioan   Provinces — Incapable 
of  self-governmenr,,  67,  75, 104,  210. 
Spain — Treaty  with,  rejected,  160. 

Taylor,  John — Jefferson's  opinion  of  his 
"constitution  construed,"  213,  216 
Tracy,  Destutx — His  Avorks,  38,  55. 

University  of  Virginia — Organization  ol 
81,  161,  173,  196,  329,  892,  441. 

Religious  objections  to  appointment 
of  Dr.  Cooper  in,  156,  162,  171. 

Difficulties  surrounding,  201,  204, 
237,  392. 


658 


INDEX    TO    VOL.    VII. 


r»iVEBBiTY  (IF  ViRBiNiA — Necessitj  for  il 

eouthern  Univei'sity,  205. 
Arriingemeut  for  religioua  worship, 

267. 
Students   allowed   to  select  tickets, 

300. 
Diffieullies  of  discipline,  301. 
Pi'Ogress  of,  309. 
Selection  of  professors  for,  348. 
Inculciition  of  federal  doctrines   in, 

sliould  be  guarded  against,  397. 
Necessity  for   an  Anatomical  Hall, 

393,  398. 
Appointment  of  foreign  professors, 

415. 
Library  of,  432. 
Establislinient  of  school  of  Botany, 

438,441. 
United  Staies — True  policy  of,  6. 

Animosity  to  England  growing  out 

of  last  war,  22. 
Relations  of,  with  European  powers, 

288. 
Relations  of.  witli  England,  22. 
D.inger  of  dissnlution  of  Union,  182. 
Should  discounpct  tlieir  policy  from 

that  of  Eui'ope,  183.  315. 
Dangers  which  threaten  them,   211, 

214. 

Van  Derkemp — History  of,  29. 
Virginia — Programme   of  new  constitu- 
tion for,  9. 


ViEGTNrA — Arnold's  inTasion  of,  144,  444- 
Historical  documents  of,  312. 
Her  first  constitution,  344. 
Defects  in,  345. 

Authorship  of  bill  of  right-^  'ii  1  con- 
stitution of,  405,  407. 

War — Benefits  of  the  last  war,  66. 
Wards — Counties  should  be  divided  into, 

35. 
Washington,  Gen. — Authorship  of  Fare- 
well Address,  291 
No  unkind  feeling  between  him  and 
Jefferson  on  account  of  Mazzei  let- 
ter, 364. 
Forms  and  ceremonies  adopted  dur- 
ing his  administration,  367. 
He  was  a  true  republican,  371. 
Washington  City — Locating  of,  512,  561. 
Water — Report  on  methods  of  obtaining 

fresh  water  from  salt,  455. 
Weights  and  Measures — A  standard  of, 
87. 
Report  on,  472. 
Whiskey — Evils  of  its  cheapness,  285. 
William  and  Mary  College — Its  founda- 
tion, 328. 
Proposition   to   consolidate    it  with 

Univei'sity,  350,  384. 
Its  charter  is  under  the  power  fl 
the  legislature,  350,  384. 
Wines — Use  of  beneficial,  110.